"Space... the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission — to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before."

Star Trek: The Next Generation is a science fiction show created by Gene Roddenberry as part of the Star Trek franchise. Set in the 24th century, about ninety years after the original series, the program features a new crew, new perspectives on established cultures (a Klingon Empire as a semi-friendly ally against a Romulan Empire emerging from decades of isolation), new antagonists and a new Enterprise (Galaxy-class starship, registration NCC-1701-D).

After struggling for a few seasons trying to establish itself apart from the Original Series, it exploded into one of the most well respected television shows ever made, partially because of a change in direction (its creator had health problems starting around season two of the show's run leading to co-producer Rick Berman taking over most of the show's daily production and his promotion to executive producer during season three) and an increased willingness to experiment with the format and scope of the show, and science fiction as a whole. At 176 episodes in length, it was the longest running Star Trek series at the timenote It was equaled by two of the three series to follow it, but has not been surpassed., and won many awards for everything from visual effects to writing. Additionally, the series has proved wildly popular in Syndication, despite having broadcast its final episode in 1994. To date, in the U.S. alone, it has been broadcast on no fewer than five different cable / satellite networks: G4, Spike TV, Syfy, WGN America and BBC America. Three of these networks, SyFy, WGN America & BBC America still regularly air episodes of the program, sometimes against each other in primetime.

The series formed the basis of the seventh through tenth Star Trek films: Generations (1994), First Contact (1996), Insurrection (1998), and Nemesis (2002). The success led to an expansion of the franchise and is single-handedly responsible for the creation of Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise. Though fans will usually agree that the quality of the episodes varies wildly, the worst of the lot still makes for compelling and thought-provoking viewing. Even boilerplate stories such as "clueless foreigner offends alien culture" or "Aliens took my Bridge Bunny" are handled in a similar manner to TOS, with Picard and company carefully explicating and deliberating over each problem. With the Federation existing in a relative state of calm and "cowboy diplomacy" no longer a viable option, the challenge is remaining true to Starfleet ideals without resorting to quick and dirty solutions... and also trying to realize when it's time to get "dirty".

CBS commissioned Mike Okuda (who designed several visual elements of the show including the main bridge design and the LCARS system used by the Federation) to oversee high quality Blu-ray transfers of the entire series from the original film stock to replace the poor quality DVD versions of the series. More information can be found at the Trek Core website, among other places. The general consensus is that the 1080p, 7.1 surround sound mixes breathe new life into the show, with the special effects work by Industrial Light and Magic looking especially stunning. The remastering of TNG has proven to be far less controversial with purists than the extensive (many argued overdone) HD revisions done to the original series.

This show provides examples of the following tropes:

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Aborted Arc: The Puppeteer Parasite aliens seen in "Conspiracy". They were intended to be harbingers of the Borg, who were originally supposed to be insectoid. In the end this idea was scrapped as the special effects were impossible and the parasites were never seen again, despite the obvious Sequel Hook of them sending off a transmission at the end of "Conspiracy". They may have inspired the similar Goa'uld from Stargate SG-1.

After Show: One reason Paramount felt confident in the risk of pouring so much money into the first season episodes - they figured if the show bombed, they'd just add the Next Gen episodes to TOS's syndication package of 79 episodes and make the money back that way.

Ain't Too Proud to Beg: In "Q Who", when Q's object lesson finally pierces Picard's arrogant complacency far enough that he realizes he won't get his crew out of the situation they're in without an honest, humble appeal to the more or less omnipotent entity who got them into it.

Alas, Poor Villain: In-universe in "Elementary, Dear Data" and "Ship in a Bottle." After being accidentally made sentient, the Moriarty hologram never does anything overtly villainous, indeed acting polite and well-mannered at all times. The reasons he hijacks the Enterprise twice are due to his frustration that he simply cannot leave the holodeck and his belief that Picard failed to keep his word about researching a way to give him autonomy: the fact that he somehow managed to remain consious during the 4-year gap between activations didn't really help his mood either. Picard even laments having to thwart him, as while he was programmed to act as an arch-villain, Moriarty is still a decent man.

All Crimes Are Equal: "Justice". A planet of free love, and they execute you for falling in flowers. It may have been a case of Blue and Orange Morality, as the alien overseers in charge of the Edo can't differentiate between the letter of the law and the spirit.

Almighty Janitor: Boothby, grounds-keeper of Starfleet Academy and trusted mentor of almost every graduate of note.

Always Chaotic Evil: The Borg Collective, and although they're Lawful in and of themselves rather than Chaotic, their effect on everyone else is Chaotic Evil as they destroy or assimilate almost indiscriminately everyone they come across as long as their prey have a minimum of technological or biological advancement - i.e. as long as whoever they are killing or assimilating is worth the energy. They try to assimilate the entire rest of the universe into their structured collective or kill them trying, and you can't reason with them or plead for mercy. Resistance is futile. Averted with Hugh, when he is separated from the Collective and gains individuality.

Commander Will Riker's love of jazz shows a softer, easier-going side than his military bearing suggests.

At one point in "Suddenly Human", Picard walks past the guest quarters where the Talarian-raised human teenager Jono is staying, and hears this blasting in the room. Jono's enjoyment of "alba ra" seems to signify he's a typical teenager.

Amnesia Danger: In "Conundrum," the crew could avoid their situation simply by ignoring their false orders and leaving, if only they didn't have amnesia.

Amnesia Loop: In "Clues", the Enterprise crew realize something is amiss, leading them to return to the source of their amnesia, a planet of xenophobes.

Lore is burdened with this sort of fate after his first appearance. In order to get rid of him, Data beams his evil brother into outer space, where the Nigh Invulnerable android will be cursed to drift around aimlessly in the endless vacuum, completely helpless. It's downplayed, since he's rescued after a "mere" few years when the crew of an alien ship discover his body floating around in space at a thousand-to-one odds, not to mention that as an android, he probably can't get bored.

The fate of Armus. He was created out of the darkest aspects of the psyches of an entire alien race and then abandoned. After he murdered Tasha Yar in a rage, the crew of the Enterprise decided that it was fitting punishment to leave him again and deploy a warning beacon that meant no-one would ever venture near the planet again. Armus even ends the episode screaming.

To say nothing of those that the Borg assimilate. As Picard implied shortly after being removed from the Collective in "The Best of Both Worlds", they're privvy to everything the Borg-them is doing, but are helpless to do anything about it. That Picard was able to break through his "Locutus of Borg" personality and tell Data how to defeat the Borg was nothing short of a miracle.

Moriarty — the self-aware hologram intended to outsmart Data — is still conscious when he is deactivated, and speaks of "brief, terrifying periods of consciousness... disembodied, without substance." Eventually, he is trapped in a small device running a permanent simulation in which he thinks he has escaped into the real world. Geordi couldn't get him into the real world, but this is still an ignominious and condescending end. Particularly since Star Trek: Voyager revealed that without regular maintenance, holodeck simulations eventually start to glitch, which can destabilise or even destroy the program. And if that happens to Moriarty, he has no way to signal for help...

The Ux-Mal criminals encountered in "Power Play" had their consciousness separated from their bodies, and left adrift as anionic energy to suffer in a moon's intense electromagnetic storms. They'd been trapped there for five hundred years when the Enterprise came along, so one can hardly blame them for trying to hijack the ship.

Anti-Villain: Moriarty. As ruthless as he is, all he wants is to leave the holodeck and experience the real world.

Amnesiac Costume Identity: In the episode "Conundrum", After an alien ship scans the Enterprise, all of the crew members develop amnesia. Worf assumes that he's the captain because he's wearing his decorated Klingon sash.

In The Chase, several factions are after a DNA code left by Precursors. The Klingons in particular think it's a weapon. To the disgust of some parties, it turns out to be a message that all the sapient races are decended from said Precursors.

In The Gambit 2-parter, Picard and Riker must prevent a crew of Space Pirates from assembling an ancient Vulcan telepathic weapon. It only works if the person it's used on is currently feeling violent, so it's basically useless if you know how it works.

Arc Number: the number 47 appears an inordinate number of times throughout the series. This is due to an in-joke amongst writer Joe Menosky and his alma mater, Pomona College, where it has been theorized that 47 is the ultimate random number. J. J. Abrams, who used 47 a lot in Alias and other works, has been known to say "47 is just 42 with inflation." Another mathematical proof written there claims all numbers ultimately equal 47. Other research has suggested the typical maximum attention span of humans on any one thing is 47 minutes, which is why high school and college course periods are typically 50 minutes in length.

In "The Measure of a Man" Picard notes how the procedure, if successful, could benefit all of Starfleet. Data's response destroys Picard's line of thought.

Data: Sir, Lieutenant La Forge's eyes are far superior to human biological eyes. True? Then why are not all human officers required to have their eyes replaced with cybernetic implants?

Later, Picard delivers one at the hearing to determine Data's legal status.

Picard:"Are you prepared to condemn him, and all who come after him, to servitude and slavery?"

Artificial Outdoors Display: The holodeck, a room with a series of holoprojectors and replicators that can create just about any environment or setting. The pilot episode shows Cmdr. Riker entering a holodeck simulation of a forest, crossing a stream, climbing a tree...

Art Evolution: A rare Live Action version, the ridge design on Worf's head changed as the show continued. This was explained as simply streamlining the make-up process.

Switching on Barclay's T-cells in "Genesis" causes the Enterprise crew to "devolve" to a variety of different species... most of which have common ancestors diverging hundreds of millions of years ago. Spot the cat becomes an iguana. This would imply that everyone walks around with copies of not only the future evolutionary patterns of their own species but ALSO whole swathes of species that are completely unrelated to them from their home planet. The worst offender being Barclay's devolution (and presumably re-evolution) into a spider, which would only be possible if he devolved into a pre-Cambrian lifeform first.

"The Chase" attempts to cure at least three problems at once...by making all of the Alpha Quadrant's DNA part of a message by a progenitor race, also humanoid, that "seeded" planets with their genetic code in the hope of more sentient humanoids like themselves popping up.

"Rightful Heir" features a clone of the Klingon legendary warrior Kahless, made from a genetic sample taken from dried blood on a knife that was a couple of thousand years old. It is incredibly unlikely that any remnants of blood on a knife that old would have anything that resembled useful genetic material, let alone a complete and undamaged genetic strand ESPECIALLY considering it had been stored in a cave all that time.

Ascended Extra: Miles O'Brien started out as an extra on this show before he became transporter chief and got his name.

Ass in Ambassador: Lwaxana Troi, Betazoid ambassador to the Federation, rarely misses an opportunity to mortify the senior staff, especially Picard and her daughter Deanna. (She is an ambassador in the same sense that countries have ambassadors to the United Nations.)

Awesome, yet Impractical: In-Universe and meta-example with the saucer separation. In-universe, it was designed so that the Enterprise could evacuate its civilian population so that it could fight whatever was coming for it, but it was rarely used in the series - twice in season 1, once during "The Best of Both Worlds Part II" and in Star Trek: Generations. Meta-wise, the model was made without the assistance of Industrial Light and Magic and when they came in, they discovered that they had a terribly imbalanced six-foot monstrosity that could only maintain balance while upside down (ever wonder why many ship shots are from the bottom?). It's because of this that the Enterprise was destroyed in Generations and replaced for Star Trek: First Contact.

Awesomeness-Induced Amnesia: When Barcley gets a brain upgrade by some aliens, after it wears off he tells Troi that he remembers doing everything he did, he just doesn't remember how.

Baby Factory: One episode ends with Doctor Pulaski telling two merged colonies they have to use this trope to insure "genetic diversity".

Back for the Finale: Denise Crosby and Colm Meaney (crossing over from the neighboring DS9 set) return for "All Good Things." However, this pales in importance to Troi's miniskirt, which is also back for the finale.

Bad Future: Or perhaps "Mediocre Future", seeing as how the TNG crew has parted ways in the future of "All Good Things..." Troi's dead (cause unknown), with Worf and Riker's relationship poisoned with bitterness over it. Picard and Beverly got hitched; got divorced. At the end, Data comments that their foreknowledge of the future is already changing the timeline, and everybody resolves to maintain their camaraderie, suggesting things might not get so bad after all.

Bald of Awesome: Over on that trope's page, Captain Picard shows us how it's done!

In "Tapestry", Picard (who's reliving his days as a fresh young ensign) has sex with his good female friend Marta Batanides. In the morning, a hand reaches up to stroke his ear, and Picard turns around, opens his eyes—and it's Q.

In the premiere, it was established that Picard did not allow children on the bridge, and he screamed Wesley off the bridge. Wesley soon gained his acceptance, but Picard's Berserk Button was seen again in the second-season "Pen Pals", he was practically trembling with rage when Data brought Sarjenka onto the bridge. (Of course, Data had also violated the Prime Directive by doing so).

The Wesley pilot example also included another of Picard's Berserk Buttons...unauthorized people sitting in the captain's chair. At times Picard would yell at various people such as Q who would do so.....as it is said that Stewart would do to reporters on set who dared do the same thing.

Better to Die than Be Killed: In "Where Silence Has Lease", Picard chooses to set the Enterprise to auto-destruct (thus killing the entire crew) rather than allow Nagilum to continue with his experiments, which would kill one-third to one-half of the crew.

Because the Klingons had become allies of The Federation by this point, their previous role of recurring antagonists went unfilled. The Ferengi were the first attempt at creating a big bad, and were found to be too comical. Then the Borg came along, but were found to be Too Awesome to Use by the writers. They eventually settled late on in the run of the show on the Cardassians, who were indeed developed into a true Big Bad on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (only for their own Big Bad status to be subverted towards the end of that show's run, following in the footsteps of the Klingons.) Ultimately, the Romulans come closest to filling out this niche, and its a bigger plot twist to find that they are not the masterminds behind the insidous scheme of the week.

Individually, Commanders Sela and Tomalak and the Sisters of Duras fill the role of recurring villains, though even they don't go out of their way to antagonize the Enterprise except when Starfleet interferes in their schemes. Though, it turns out that they too were just Romulan pawns.

Q seems to be set up as Picard's Arch-Enemy in the pilot and his appearances in the first season see him portrayed as malevolent and even sadistic. In later seasons, his appearances were usually played for laughs, although he would occasionally resume the role of antagonist, notably in the finale "All Good Things" which revisits the scenario of the pilot. Q's personality, however, means you're not really sure whether he really means you harm or is faking it For the Lulz, furthermore, Q's nature as an time-travelling Energy Being who lives outside of time and can not only take any form he likes but can create matter and illusions out of thin air means not only that different events could be happening out of sequence with his personal timeline, but that the nature of his interactions with the crew could in fact seem very different from what is really happening - and the audience knows all this uncertainty but never gets a firm answer out of anything.

"Darmok", again Picard, while trapped in a transporter beam as his new friend is pummeled by the Monster of the Week.

"Night Terrors", again Picard, when he experiences extreme claustrophobia on the turbolift and feels as if he's rushing up towards the ceiling.

"Sarek", yet again Picard, after he shares a mind-meld with Sarek, who is able to benefit from Picard's cool composure for some very important negotiations, while (in a simply awesome performance) Picard is exposed to the full brunt of Sarek's released emotions and regrets.

Big Secret: "The Drumhead". When it becomes clear Ensign Tarses is hiding something, he becomes the chief suspect in the trial with the investigative team going all out to prove he's the saboteur they're after. It's a waste of everyone's time as he's innocent, his Dark Secret being mostly unrelated to the original crime — to the conspiracy-minded mind, it did have a connection. The original crime involved betraying the Federation to the Romulans. Tarses' secret turned out to be that rather than being a quarter Vulcan, he was a quarter Romulan. This is why the investigation against Tarses continues for a while after Tarses' secret is revealed.

Bilingual Bonus: In "The Icarus Factor", the Japanese characters written on the side of the anbo-jyutsu ring are mostly martial-arts relevant elemental characters— 火 (fire), 水 (water), etc. "ユリ" ("YURI") is a Shout-Out to Dirty Pair. There are a few of them scattered around the show. The top of the ring says 星 (star).

Bio Data: Klingons are NOT dumb. A Klingon scientist temporarily posted on the Enterprise-D modified a hyposyringe with an optical chip reader, and would use that to transform digital information from the ship's computers into amino acid sequences. Then he would inject someone without their knowledge, and the information would be carried in their bodies in their bloodstream as inert proteins, which could be extracted at any time by another spy. Damn, son!

It seems that by the 24th century, the Klingons have actually learned a few things. This is slightly more plausible than the Enterprise example.

The Ancient Humanoid Precursors in "The Chase" encoded a message to their descendants- us, as well as the Klingons, Cardassians, Romulans, Bolians, Yridians, Vulcans... you get the idea.

In "Transfigurations," Data and Geordi examine a Zalkonian memory storage device from mysterious "John Doe's" escape pod that is stated to use a chemical matrix for data storage. It's basically the escape pod's Black Box.

"The Vengeance Factor". The last of the Acamarian Lornack clan is saved by Riker's intervention; that intervention consists of the vaporization of the woman who was Riker's love interest for that episode.

"The Perfect Mate" where a woman whom Picard has emotionally bonded with must marry another to seal a peace treaty. It's implied that the marriage isn't even necessary, as the person she's marrying is more concerned with the trade opportunities that peace will bring.

"The Inner Light" when Picard plays the flute.

After the Bynar's system is saved in "11001001", when Riker discovers that much of what made Minuet unique is no longer there.

Bizarre Alien Psychology: The Borg as originally presented in this series are a Hive Mind. Individual thought is suppressed and all the minds are linked to think as one. This is retconned in Star Trek: First Contact, where the hive has a central queen controlling the thought, who thinks more or less like a human, but the initial concept was very alien.

In "Unnatural Selection", the youths who were genetically engineered would have to spend the rest of their lives in quarantine because their superior immune systems that protect them against all disease also attack anyone nearby at the cellular level, causing extreme premature aging.

In "The Hunted", men who were chemically and psychologically programmed to be the perfect soldier (including perfect memory) were unable to return to the society they volunteered to protect because of their programming, which essentially made them lethal attack machines against their will (which means they remember killing people they had no desire to kill).

Blue and Orange Morality: A common theme, as reflected by the ever-present Prime Directive, which forbids the Federation from (among other things) imposing their beliefs on sovereign nations.

"Justice" examines the Edo, a society where All Crimes Are Equal and punishable by death. It seems to work for them, as they have a genuinely peaceful and idyllic world with only a token level of law enforcement. As small as the odds of being caught committing a crime may be, no one is willing to gamble their life on it. It becomes a problem for the Enterprise, however, when Wesley has the misfortune of breaking the tiniest rule, by complete accident, in view of the police.

The Borg are an example, being completely ruthless in their goal to assimilate the galaxy, but only because they believe doing so is the path to perfection.

In the episode "Samaritan Snare", Picard and Wesley are taking a long shuttlecraft ride to a Starbase. At one point Picard does it in annoyance at all the questions Wesley is bothering him with.

In "Elementary, Dear Data", Data and Geordi are playing Holmes and Watson in the holodeck. Geordi records Data/Holmes in Watson's journal...and slams it shut in frustration as he realizes Data is just reciting an existing Holmes story instead of actually deducing clues.

In the episode "Captain's Holiday", Picard does this upon being harassed by a Ferengi while trying to relax on vacation.

Bothering by the Book: In the episode "The Ensigns of Command," Captain Picard prevents a rather bureaucratic race of aliens from wiping out a human colony by using a technicality in a treaty to deter them (specifically, naming another species as a mediator who're currently in the middle of a hibernation cycle that'll last for another 6 months).

Brain Critical Mass: In the episode "The Nth Degree," Barclay's brain is taken over by an ancient race from the center of the galaxy, greatly increasing his intellect. Under their influence, Barclay seizes command of the Enterprise, controlling the ship with his mind. This has the small drawback that he can't be removed from the ship's systems without destroying said mind...but the aliens who started all of this fix that too, in the end.

Brain Fever: In "Qpid," the crew of the Enterprise and Picard's flame, Vash, are placed in a Robin Hood simulation. Vash is Maid Marian and is being ministered by a nurse, who says that she must have a brain sickness for sure. She offers to get some nice fresh leeches to drain the fever, which horrifies Vash.

Brainwash Residue: After losing his superintelligence, Barclay seems to retain some chess-playing ability.

More than a few episodes had members of the Enterprise's crew caught up in planetary rebellions. In at least two of them, crew members were specifically targeted for abduction because they were Federation citizens, and the Federation had access to plentiful weapons and supplies that they hoped would be traded for the hostages. In all cases, Picard refused to provide any significant aid to the party opposing the ones that took his personnel, citing the Prime Directive as his reason. The problem with that is that the abductors had committed an act of war against the Federation. One group came very close to stealing or destroying the Enterprise, the flagship of the fleet. So the moral of "You have to solve your own problems, rather than finding someone else to solve them for you", became "The strong and principled are good targets, because they won't fight someone so much weaker than them."

The episode "The Game" attempted to make an aesop that video games are EVIL. However, the game in question (a weird "put disc into bad CGI tubes" game) was actively programmed to brainwash who ever plays it. Also, holodecks are the final form of video games (can simulate ANY scenario imaginable, and stimulate all the senses while doing it), and nobody had a problem with them.

"The Outcast" as a metaphor for homosexuality... except all the androgynous aliens are portrayed by women, the titular character identifies as a woman, and falls in love with a man. So the story ends up looking more like a heroic straight woman rebelling against lesbian tyranny. This might have been the point (reverse the discrimination to show people what it's like), but it didn't come across quite right. Jonathan Frakes objected to the casting of a woman in the part, arguing that it would be more effective with a man.

In "Symbiosis", Picard cites the Prime Directive as the reason he cannot interfere, even though the Brekkians are exploiting the Onarans' addiction to the Felicium, believing it to be a "cure" for a plague they have, when it's actually a narcotic. In the end, he decides to give them the drug, but refuse to help them fix their freighters, thus causing them to go cold turkey. Good ending, right? Except Picard seems to overlook the fact that once they go cold turkey and realise the Brekkians have been lying to them for centuries, this would probably result in them declaring War! Which is fine with the PD; what they do about their issues is their business.

The Season 7 episode "Eye of the Beholder" is a bizarre and curiously awkward attempt at an Anti-Suicide PSA, but they botch it by trying to have it both ways. The first act treats the suicide of a Red Shirt completely seriously, exploring it from all angles, explaining how those that commit suicide often show no obvious signs of distress. It's fairly effective, sort of a forerunner of the subject's similar treatment on an episode of House, M.D.. And then they completely botch it by Hand-Waving the uncharacteristic suicide as being the result of Psychic Powers gone awry, using it as another pitstop in the Worf/Troi Ship Tease. One wonders if the writers held the opinion that no one would seriously want to commit suicide in the Mary Sue Topia that is the 24th Century. This carries some potential Unfortunate Implications when you think about the prevalence of suicide in the present day...

In "Homeward," the crew is ready to let the Boraalans die for the sake of the Prime Directive, stating that they "cannot interfere in a species' natural development" (never mind that this natural development is DEATH, and the crew essentially ends up using the Prime Directive as a shield from actually doing anything in this case). Nikolai Rozhenko is made out to be in the wrong by the characters and the episode never addresses that the main characters (our heroes) were basically ready to let a civilization die out for the sake of a legal document. Not only is this morally unpleasant, it flies in the face of both previous episodes ("Pen Pals") and a later movie ("Insurrection"). The central point of the Prime Directive is that interfering often does more harm than leaving things alone; death is kind of the ultimate harmnote Even worse, the civilization is about to be destroyed by a natural disaster-type extinction event - if the civilization had brought about their own ruin somehow, one could have at least cold-bloodedly argued that there was no point in saving such a people that would do this to themselves.

Bury Your Disabled: Subverted in "Ethics". Worf becomes paraplegic after an accident. By Klingon tradition, he can commit ritualistic suicide (and he comes close to it). However, he takes another presented option when a research doctor wants to test her theory that she can create a new spinal cord for him.

Geordi who gets pwned nearly as much as Worf (suffering from The Worf Effect). He's even hopeless with women. One particularly cruel episode had an alien taunt his blindness by moving his visor around, just because. The series seems to never let us go on the fact that he's blind (until the movies, well actually he gets taunted again in Generations, which may or may not have led him to go get cybernetic replacements by Star Trek: First Contact.). And apparently his mom disappears as some plot of the week. Worst yet is that nobody gives a damn about his mom afterwards. And to add insult to injury, in Voyager's "Timeless" he tries to stop Harry Kim and fails. Ouch. In one episode, he's heading on his merry way to Risa for some rest, relaxation and poontang. He gets kidnapped by Romulans and gets a Mind Rape from them. See here for further proof of his incredibly poor luck.

Next to Worf and Geordi, Deanna Troi filled this role many times. She was always being possessed by aliens, abused by aliens in crashed shuttles, abducted by aliens for political gambits, being nearly forced to marry an alien, having her psychic powers robbed by aliens, suffering nightmares at the hands of aliens, forced to listen to a virtual music box in her head for days by an alien, the list goes on. Her only real use on the show was to counsel the random crew member of the week and to tell Picard when she sensed weird things happening while on the bridge -– apart from being this show's Ms. Fanservice, that is.

Cain and Abel: Data has a "brother" named Lore, which turned out to contact an alien mass-killer entity and tried to let it kill everyone aboard.

California Doubling: Lore's Rogue Borg compound in "The Descent" is The House of the Book performance hall and library building at the American Jewish University, Brandeis-Bardin Campus in Simi Valley, California.

Call Back: In "Relics", Scotty finds the synthehol on the Enterprise unacceptable, so Data finds him some real alcohol behind the bar in Ten-forward. Scotty asks what it is, and Data replies, "It is..." (pause while he looks at it and opens and sniffs it), "...it is green." This is exactly what Scotty said to a Kelvin in the original Star Trek series, when bringing him a bottle of booze in the episode "By Any Other Name."

Captain Obvious: Troi does this so much it earned her the Fan Nickname of "Counselor Obvious". Data also did this frequently in the first and second seasons.

Capture and Replicate: A group of aliens capture Captain Picard and replace him with a double in the episode "Allegiance". This was part of an experiment to examine the nature of authority, as they were a Hive Mind with no concept of individuality or hierarchy. The real Picard was locked in a cell with three others to see if they could work together to escape; the fake Picard on the Enterprise gives his officers increasingly insane orders to test their loyalty.

Casino Episode: In The Royale, the crew discover a replica of a 20th-century earth casino on an alien planet. Turns out the aliens modeled it after a badly-written novel.

Changed My Jumper: Any time the cast enters the holodeck in a period setting the artificial characters are the first to comment on their strange uniforms. In one of the few actual Time Travel episodes Data received less comments on his Starfleet uniform than he would if he were in an artificial setting. It seems holodeck characters are just rude.

Character Development: Part of the reason the show came into its own was building up the origin stories and social habits of the crew, which served to make them more real. Gene Roddenberry, it turns out, wasn't so fond of character development. The characters were supposed to inhabit an enlightened future, but conflict is what breeds drama. Some writers left after season 1 due to this and other strange restrictions he had. Characters introduced later in the show's run, Lt. Barclay and Ensign Ro Laren are significantly more complex and, importantly, flawed.

Character Shilling: Multiple examples, but the most well known was that of the shilling done for Wesley, which grated at the fans and became the former trope namer for the more negative and YMMV version of the trope, Creator's Pet. Apart from shilling Wesley, the story also shills a few other characters, even those who are actually popular like Riker. We are frequently assured that Riker could be a captain on any other ship in the fleet, but without a great deal of backing for the idea.

In the episode "The Defector", one of the coded communications Picard receives is from a Klingon vessel. We don't see the communication and it seems to be a throwaway line in the middle of the episode. Turns out, he was enlisting the assistance of the Klingons. Three of their vessels joined the Enterprise under cloak through the Neutral Zone and defended them against two Romulan warbirds who attempted to ambush them.

Another example of this trope involving Klingons takes place in "Reunion". We're given our first look at the bat'leth in Worf's quarters and see him showing Alexander the right way to hold and swing it. Later on, a grieving and enraged Worf takes it off the wall again and uses it to exact lethal revenge on Duras for killing K'Ehleyr.

Something about Klingon weapons just seems to make it impossible to resist using them. In "Suddenly Human", Jono examines a dagger in Picard's quarters, observing that it's Klingon. Later, he uses that dagger to try to stab Picard to death in his sleep.

In "Genesis," La Forge and Barclay are accessing circuitry in the Jeffries tube. During dialog, Barclay, for no apparent reason other than to show the audience what he's about to work on, which tips the trope off, twirls a band of brightly-lit power cords like a lasso in his hand. Later, when Picard seeks escape from a frenzied Worf, he uses said cords to electrify the deck to electrocute Worf while Picard sits atop an insulated panel.

Chemical Messiah: The episode "Symbiosis" features a medicine that supposedly cures the race of a planet from some sort of illness. Except that the medicine is really a drug curing them of nothing more than severe withdrawal symptoms! The people believed that it was their last saviour of mankind, but it wasn't. OK, so yes it did cure them at one point, but now the people of the planet had become drug addicts.

Chewing the Scenery: Several aliens, but most notably the leaders of Akmarian Gatherer faction from season 3 episode 9, "The Vengeance Factor".

Child Marriage Veto: In "Haven", Deanna Troi has been arranged to be married to Wyatt Miller. It's not Deanna who breaks off the marriage, though; it's Wyatt, who has had dreams of a non-Deanna woman since he was a child...and then he finds her on a plague ship.

The first season episode "Justice" has an idyllic planet that worships an interdimensional spaceship thing as their god. How advanced it really is isn't firmly established, but it's strongly implied that it's at least a match for the Enterprise.

In "Devil's Due," the "devil" is simply using technology to simulate magic. Noteworthy in that the technology isn't even sufficiently advanced; it's just been dressed-up to look more impressive than it really is.

The third season episode "Who Watches the Watchers" again casts the Enterprise crew in the role of the ones with the sufficiently advanced technology, when a botched encounter with a pre-industrial civilisation leaves some of them thinking that Picard is a god.

In "The Next Phase", Ro and Geordi are invisible and intangible after an accident. Ro is at first convinced that they're ghosts now that need to make peace before moving on to the afterlife. Turns out they're just "out of phase" with normal matter, except for the plot-convenient floors (and oxygen).

Subverted in Q's first appearance, where it is made very clear that Q has the power of a god essentially and is willing to use it to satisfy his own whims, leaving the Enterprise crew completely at his mercy and needing to satisfy the requirements of his game to survive.

Cliffhanger: One at the end of every season from year 3 onward. The first of these is probably the second most famous TV cliffhanger ever (behind "Who Shot JR?")

The cliffhanger in question resulted in months of speculation in the media, as the episode ended on the possibility that Captain Picard would die and be replaced by Riker. This led to rumors that Patrick Stewart was leaving the show and the episode was intended as a way to write his character out of the series. The first part even sets up a new first officer for the ship. These rumors proved untrue, and at the end of part two everything returned to normal, but the story was told so well that few viewers minded.

At the time, fans seemed to be divided between four possible scenarios: Picard would die and Riker would become Captain, Picard would live but remain a Borg and thus become the show's recurring big bad, Riker would die saving Picard's life, or things would return to normal. Quite a few fanfics (and at least one official Star Trek comic) have been devoted to exploring the alternate scenarios. The alternate scenarios are also given a nod in later alternate-timeline episodes, most notably "Parallels".

The official story is that Stewart was renegotiating his contract and they had to leave it open for the possibility of his leaving. The ending wasn't decided until after the first part was shot.

Fandom reaction to all the cliffhangers was mixed, most often finding the setup episode wonderful and the resolution episode somewhat lame.

Clip Show: "Shades of Grey" was made with a bare essentials plot and even fewer bare essentials actors due to a budget overrun earlier in the season.

Clone Degeneration: In "Up the Long Ladder," the driving plot for the unification of the two colonies is that the clones cannot keep copying themselves any longer.

Combat Medic: Beverly Crusher is not only one of the best doctors in the Federation, she studies Klingon martial arts (and can drop you on your ass so fast you won't remember the trip down) and is fully capable of commanding a starship in combat. She also phasers a Starfleet Admiral in "Conspiracy".

Comes Great Responsibility: The ostensible basis of Q's argument in "True Q" that Amanda Rogers should be returned to the Q Continuum, or else be killed.

Q: If that child doesn't learn to control her power, she could destroy herself. Or all of you. Or your entire galaxy.

Come to Gawk: Data being put on display is the plot of "The Most Toys."

Comic-Book Adaptation: DC Comics published several series, including a crossover with Malibu Comics' Deep Space Nine title. Included in DC's run was an adaptation of the the TNG finale episode "All Good Things..." Later, Marvel Comics ran a series before DC took the licence back for its Wildstorm imprint, and later IDW Publishing got the rights.

Completely Off-Topic Report: Picard tells about a speaker at a conference who went on at length about some engineering topic "not realizing that the topic was supposed to be psychology."

Picard: Dr. Vassbinder gave an hour long dissertation on the ionization of warp nacelles before he realized that the topic was supposed to be psychology.

La Forge: Why didn't anybody tell him?

Picard: There was no opportunity. There was no pause. He just kept talking in one long incredibly unbroken sentence, moving from topic to topic so that no one had a chance to interrupt. It was really quite hypnotic.

The Confidant: Counselor Troi is the obvious choice, given that that's her job; Guinan the bartender serves the role more informally, but seems overall to succeed at it more often than Troi manages.

Continuity Nod: One of the most commendable aspects of the show. TNG is excellent at making references to previous events in a variety of contexts, including other Trek shows.

In Season 2's "Time Squared", when about to face the vortex that sent the other Picard back in time six hours, Picard draws comparisons to The Traveler from "Where No One Has Gone Before" and Manheim from "We'll Always Have Paris".

There are several instances during the third season that allude to the fact that Dr. Crusher wasn't on the Enterprise during the previous season— and not all of them were directly related to Wesley. For example, in "Who Watches the Watchers?", Picard asks Crusher if the Mintakan's memory can be erased, mentioning it's been done before. Crusher replies that she's familiar with Dr. Pulaski's research (as seen in "Pen Pals" with Sarjenka). Then in "The Best of Both Worlds, Part I", when about to join the away team onto the Borg ship, she asks Data what kind of resistance they can expect. (The fact that she wasn't around for the first Borg encounter in "Q Who?" was even pointed out in the screenplay).

Fan Favorite episode "Relics" was written by Promoted Fanboy Ronald Moore and featured Continuity Nods to TNG and TOS in nearly every scene, most especially the holodeck recreation of the original series bridge.

One of the most interesting, yet little known ones is the opening Captain's Log of episode 80 where Picard mentions the ship having recently left the same planet in which the last episode of ToS (Which officially was episode 79) happened on.

One of the most unexpected nods is that Picard in an early Season 2 episode "Samaritan Snare" privately told Wesley Crusher that when he got stabbed in the heart by a Naussican, he inexplicably started laughing. Cut four years later to "Tapestry", when we find out why young Picard started laughing.

Another example is in Season 7, Episodes 11 and 18 ("Parallels" and "Eye of the Beholder"). In the latter episode, Worf awkwardly discusses the theoretical case of being interested in someone Riker was, had been, or might want to be involved with in a Suspiciously Specific Denial sort of way. In the former episode, where Worf got stuck constantly skipping through parallel universes, Troi was his wife, and it's stated that Worf discussed the issue with Riker before officially courting her—as it would have been dishonorable to do otherwise.

Worf: Are...you involved with [the Lieutenant]? Riker: I'm not sure yet...why, you interested in her? Worf: No, no, no-–but if I were, I would of course discuss the situation with you before proceeding further. Riker: [laughs] I appreciate it, but that really wouldn’t have been necessary. Worf: I mean, I would never want to come between you and someone youre involved with...or had ever been involved with. Riker: Is there someone in particular that you’re talking about? Worf: No...[squints eyes] is there someone in particular you’d rather I not be involved with?

Season 1 episode "Coming of Age" has an inspector question the crew about several earlier episodes in the season.

Converging-Stream Weapon: The Federation develops a 'collimator beam' made of dozens of small phaser banks spread along the rim of a ship; the energy can be seen flowing along the surface of the Enterprise until it meets at one point, and then fires off from the point on the phaser bank row closest to the target.

Costumer: Several times; mostly holodeck adventures, although the most famous was "Q-Pid", which is decidedly not set on the holodeck.

"Measure of a Man" was based around a trial where Data's status as property or lifeform was determined.

"The Drumhead" was based around trials where a Starfleet admiral tries to prove there is a conspiracy on the Enterprise.

The more campy "Devil's Due" has Picard prove that a con artist is not the god that alien legend says made a deal with their race many generations ago, and is therefore not owed the terms of the contract she's trying to collect on. Data acts as judge.

Court-Martialed: As stated in "The Measure of a Man" Jean-Luc Picard faced a general court-martial for the loss of his previous command, the USS Stargazer, but was cleared. Truth in Television; in most modern navies, just as Louvois points out is the case for Starfleet, a court-martial is standard procedure following the loss of a ship regardless of cause. This is not so much because the captain is necessarily suspected of wrongdoing, as simply to provide a structured forum for the details of the loss to be made part of the official record.

In "Symbiosis", Picard agrees to let the Onarans have their shipment of Felicium, but refuses to let them have the coils required to fix their freighters. Because of this, they will eventually go cold turkey, thus breaking their addiction and dependence on the Brekkians for the drug.

This is one interpretation of Worf's decision to spare Toral at end of the Klingon civil war. He let's Toral live, but Toral receives discommendation instead, the same Fate Worse Than Death that Worf had received from Toral's father.

Continuity Overlap: Because it was the first of the post-TOS shows as well as the first 24th Century-era series, TNG only overlapped with Seasons 1-2 of "DS9". The biggest instance of this trope is during the close of Season 7. The episode "Journey's End" establishes the Federation-Cardassian Demilitarized Zone. This leads into "DS9"'s "The Maquis", which then leads back into TNG's penultimate episode and causes recurring Bajoran Ro Laren to defect.

The Creon: William Riker is one of the best examples of this trope, having turned down multiple chances over the years to get his own command, just so he could stay as Picard's first officer.

Cuckoo Nest: In "Frame of Mind," Riker is captured and forced to believe that he is in an asylum.

Cultured Warrior: Picard is usually the example, but TNG basically made everyone in Starfleet this to some degree. (It's from DS9, but Worf's comment that "I am a Starfleet officer. I know many things," seems pertinent, especially as he was commenting on Ferengi culture.) Though it also made Starfleet less militaristic...

Curb-Stomp Battle: The Battle of Wolf 359, in which a fleet of forty Federation starships faced off against a single Borg cube; given such a wide disparity of forces, the outcome was never in doubt. Enterprise was too far away to join the fleet, but not too far for a pre-battle conversation between the senior staff and the admiral commanding. When Enterprise finally reaches the battle site, all that's left is the shattered remains of the fleet, and the exhaust trail of the Borg cube, which shows no sign of scathe once it's finally caught up with, well within the Sol system.

Cure Your Gays: "The Outcast" has a variation of this, in which a monogender race uses psychotherapy to cure those who identify with being male or female.

Dan Browned: In "I, Borg", Guinan and Picard are fencing. They are wearing epee costumes, using epee rules, however, the two are clearly using foils. Especially annoying because the writers did their research the last time Picard fenced in-show and had the correct weapons.

Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Deconstructed in "The First Duty" when one of these turns out to be the direct cause of a crash that killed a friend of Wesley's at the Academy while practicing for a comencement-ceremony flight demonstration.

Dare to Be Badass: Q's entire trial, distilled to its essence. Echoed in the final line of the show:

Picard: Five-card stud, nothing wild...and the sky's the limit.

Dashed Plotline: Picard's alternate life in "The Inner Light" is portrayed with many large time-skips.

Data Crystal: Played fairly straight with isolinear chips, which are oblong, transparent, and decorated with circuitry squiggles on either flat side.

Day in the Life: "Data's Day" is framed around this - the plot of the episode is laid out as a communique from Data to Commander Maddox.

Picard is one of these to some extent throughout the series, most notably in "The Survivors", after he beams Kevin and Rishaun Uxbridge to the bridge.

Jean-Luc Picard: My apologies if I interrupted a waltz.

If the trope hadn't already been established, John de Lancie would've done it all by himself in his role as Q, which is a big part of what makes his appearances so enjoyable. (His Large Ham tendencies are another, and they're played to the full in the Star Trek: Borg FMV game, which is essentially an interactive Lower-Deck Episode of TNG. Its producers seem to have pretty much given him free rein, and the result is marvelous; he turns it all the way up to Chewing the Scenery at times, more or less carries the whole thing on his shoulders, and still manages to give the character that touch of capricious menace which sometimes seems lacking in the show proper.)

Deprogramming: At the end of "The Mind's Eye", after Geordi gets turned into a Manchurian Agent, we get a brief look at Troi starting the deprogramming.

Destroy the Abusive Home: Riker starred in a play directed by Dr. Crusher wherein he's a sane man trapped in a mental institution. During the course of his next assignment, he becomes a sane man trapped in a mental institution, and starts to go crazy. After he's rescued, he destroys the mental institution set.

Devil's Advocate: In "Measure of a Man", a scientist wants to disassemble Data for study, and Data refuses as a sentient being. A hearing is held to determine whether Data is sentient. Picard is Data's defense counsel, and Riker is appointed as the prosecution - so he has to argue that Data isn't sentient. He risks summary judgement against Data if he slacks off on the job. Riker feels guilty about doing it, but Data is grateful - or anyway as grateful as an android allegedly with no emotions can be - since if Riker had refused to do it they would have decided against Data (for if he isn't a sentient being, he lacks the right to bodily autonomy, such are the rules of procedure in the 24th century).

"Die Hard" on an X: "Power Play" and "Starship Mine". The latter moreso than the former: it takes precisely 15 fifteen minutes for Picard to turn into Bruce Willis, and even the "Who said we were terrorists?" line is uttered.

Diplomatic Impunity: In "Man of the People", Ambassador Alkar has been using young women as receptacles to store his unwanted negative emotions, turning them malevolent and unnaturally aging them. After Troi dies, Picard tells him that he intends to see that Alkar pays for what he's done. Alkar replies that the Federation Council has guaranteed his safe passage back to his homeworld, and he expects Picard to follow those orders. His diplomatic immunity is revoked when Troi is resuscitated while Alkar attempts to bond with someone else, and then they beam his intended victim out of his reach.

The trope is played straight earlier in the episode when Alkar refuses to return with Picard and Worf to the Enterprise and hides behind the security field put up by the parties he's negotiating a peace agreement for.

Disappointed by the Motive: In the episode "Starship Mine", Picard battles a group of terrorists on the Enterprise after he's stranded on there when the ship is going through the middle of a decontamination sweep. When their leader Kelsey captures him near the end, he reveals his identity and offers himself as a hostage if she'll forget about the weapons-grade material she took. She admits that she doesn't have a political agenda, she's just a thief. This disgusts Picard even more.

Picard: Profit. This is all about profit.

Kelsey: I prefer to think of it as commerce.

Disease By Any Other Name: In one episode, Data is damaged and loses his memories while recovering a piece of a Starfleet probe that had crashed on a medieval style Rubber-Forehead Alien World. Data, with no way of knowing the piece of the probe he had with him was radioactive, has no problem letting the local blacksmith start making trinkets and jewelry out of that odd new metal. Soon the entire village is sick (as radioactive particles have seeped into the water table from smithing) and, predictably, the villagers blame the strange newcomer for their problems.

This was made even worse by the trial, in which noone even bothered to point out that Wesley did not intentionally step over the marker (hence violating the law). He was trying to catch a ball, and tripped and fell. One wonders what the legal system on that planet would've said if they had made this argument.

The Dog Is an Alien: In one episode, the crew of the Enterprise suspect a shapeshifting alien monster to have killed and impersonated a member of a remote science station. The two humanoid suspects (one of them Klingon) are eventually cleared by lab tests, but in a horrifying twist the dog from the station that nobody paid any mind to is revealed to be the alien, and it almost devours Geordi to take his form.

"Aquiel," where the crew finds out that a shape-shifting organism is behind the Mystery of the Week. Two people, a Klingon and the titular Aquiel, are suspected of being the monster, but it's really Aquiel's dog, which served as a minor comedic subplot during the episode.

Riker finds himself flashing forward through time in "Future Imperfect", but when the details don't add up, the surroundings change to that of a Romulan holodeck, with Riker as their prisoner. Actually, the real person in charge is Ethan, Riker's "son" who appears throughout each illusion. "Ethan" turns out to be an alien orphan in disguise; he was lonely and just wanted a playmate.

Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: Picard learned the hard way that if you refuse a nigh-omnipotent being's offer to join your crew, don't be a arrogant jerk about it lest he throw you into the path of The Borg.

Don't You Dare Pity Me!: In "Skin of Evil," Armus tells Troi to take her pity and shove it. Picard later exploits Armus' extreme distaste toward being pitied.

In the episode "The Child", Counselor Troi is impregnated by an alien, and she gives birth to him. Troi later insists on carrying it to term, and once he's born he reveals that he only did it to explore human existence, and he may not have realized the implications of what it was doing. Although the being did impregnate her without having sex with her, so it's not rape, it's more impregnation without consent (more like giving someone in vitro fertilization without their knowledge than anything else).

In episode "The Host", a Trill (at that time implied to have all personality in the "parasite" part rather than a shared consciousness) who was having a sexual relationship with Doctor Crusher temporarily takes possession of Riker's body (with consent) to continue diplomatic negotiations. Doctor Crusher has trouble reconciling her romantic feelings for the Trill-personality with Riker's body — but the issue of whether Riker would consent to her having sex with his body is never even mentioned.

Dramatic Downstage Turn: Occurs every few episodes, with different characters utilizing it. Most notable is Perrin, Sarek's new wife, who seems to do this at least once in each of the episodes she appears in.

Dream Within a Dream: Taken to an extreme in "Frame of Mind". Riker shifts from the Enterprise before both his mission and role in a play to an insane asylum. This happens several times so no one, from Riker to the audience, knows what is real. At the end, it is shown that he is in a laboratory room as alien doctors are trying to get information from his brain. The shifts were due to a defense mechanism of his mind.

The Dutiful Son: Robert Picard preferred to stay home in France rather than go out to space.

Dying Race: "Up the Long Ladder" features two races who were in danger of dying out: Walking talking Irish stereotypes, and a group of five upper class people who were clones of clones of clones etc. etc. of the original survivors.

"When the Bough Breaks" features the Aldeans who kidnap the Enterprise crew's children in order to prevent their extinction.

E-H

Ear Worm: Invoked on Troi in "The Survivors" with plot-reaching implications.

As a specific example: Shortly after hearing about a battle that the Enterprise is about to investigate, Riker asks if they should separate the saucer. This question was hardly ever asked after the first season, and indeed, the saucer was separated twice in the first season and only once in the rest of the series, and once more in Star Trek: Generations. The Word of God explanation is that separating the saucer section (with its attendant civilian families) was planned as a standard common-sense procedure when going into a potential combat situation. However, in practice they found out that it took too much time away from the story-telling to depict on screen on a regular basis. Hence its use was never actually written in much.

In "Encounter at Farpoint," Data says he graduated in the "Class of '78." Later episodes would establish the first season to take place in 2364, with Data serving in Starfleet for only twenty years.

In "Heart of Glory", the Enterprise notifies Starfleet that they're entering the Neutral Zone. Notification, not approval. Also, the Visual Acuity Transmitter seen here is never used again.

"The Samaritan Snare" in Season 2 also has a line of dialogue clearly implying that the Klingons have actually joined the Federation, rather than just becoming standoffish allies (though this was already inconsistent with several previous episodes at the time, and may perhaps have been a reference to an idea that had been rejected before the series began but slipped in by mistake).

The first appearance of the Trill featured hosts that looked nothing like they did in later series, as well as allowing humans the ability to serve as temporary hosts- another feature that was forgotten about later on. The episode also seemed to imply that the Trill had very little prior outside contact, although DS9 established they'd been interacting with the galaxy for some time. This episode also implies that the mind of the host is completely irrelevant, the mind and intellect almost entirely the symbiote's, and transferring the symbiote to a different host is transferring the same person to a different body.

After that, it's established that implanting the symbiote into a host creates an inseparable melding of the symbiote and host's minds and that the death of the host is essentially the death of that person, whose mindset and memories continue to exist within the symbiote and then meld together with previous hosts to form the basis of the new mind with the new host. Their avoidance of transporters was also dropped after the first episode.

The early seasons suggested that the Federation/Klingon alliance was a relatively new development. However, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country would show that the alliance officially started 70 years before TNG. Though they did show the alliance was strained at times leading up to TNG.note The film was about the final peace treaty between the Federation and the Klingons, not a formal alliance. It was essentially to allow an exchange of resources so that the Klingons could deal with the environmental devastation of their homeworld. The formal alliance came later, after the Enterprise-C attempted to save a Klingon colony from a Romulan attack. Of course, in one episode, Wesley's line suggested that the Klingons had actually joined the Federation.

In "Encounter At Farpoint" we learn that Riker and Troi are so in love that they can talk to each other telepathically. Never ever brought up again despite the two dozen or so times it would have been useful - although as one internet reviewer put it: Having the power to talk telepathically to men only after she has spread her legs for them is probably something she tried to keep off the resume.

The man skirt, AKA the skant. It was created on the reasoning that with complete gender equality, a skirt uniform would have to be unisex.

Worf, Geordi, and O'Brien are all redshirts. O'Brien has held more job titles than any of them: He begins the series as a helmsman, is promoted to Transporter Chief, and leaves the series a full-fledged Chief Engineer, with no prior mention of his training in either field. (Although he mentions once fixing a Jeffries tube in TNG's "Realm of Fear".) On DS9, O'Brien explains that he discovered a knack for repair work when he was gerry-rigging a transporter beacon during the war with the Cardassians, and the series finale "All Good Things..." retconss his engineering credentials way back during the events of the first season.

In the first season, Worf acts half-feral. He is highly emotional, resorts to wordless growling when he gets upset, and at one point acts disgusted at anything that even resembles bathing. A far cry from the stoic and disciplined officer he would be later.

Take away the enjoyable introductions of the senior staff (and a non-advertised cameo by DeForest Kelly!) and you have a boilerplate TOS script masquerading as a series pilot. At this stage of the game Gene Roddenberry is playing it safe and introducing a great deal of Original Series elements to the show – sexism is rife, God-like beings are judging humanity and familiar music punctuates events with urgency. The Farpoint mission brought back the TOS miniskirts and knee-high boots, except with TNG coloring. You'll note also that the hand phasers are smaller here.

It seems Gene was a little fuzzy on the definition of "android" (as opposed to cyborg), hence a smiling Data who is susceptible to the polywater virus. Geordi the helmsman is much less staid than Geordi the engineer.

Doc Oho: For some reason and for one episode only Geordi is behaving like a jiving MC Hammer engineer, jigging with his hands and spouting funky dialogue and exclaiming ‘oo-wee!’ when a plan comes together!

The holographic table in the conference room is pretty nifty but one understands why they stuck to a viewscreen in future seasons. (DS9 ran into a similar problem with the one-episode wonder "holo-communcator", which looked good but took ages to shoot.) Another quibble from "The Last Outpost": Dr. Bev affectionately calls by his first name, "Jean", but leaves out the Luc.

The first two seasons on a whole have a more low-budget and campy feel to them than the later seasons.

Data uses a contraction in the very first episode. (Something he is specifically stated to be incapable of in a later episode.)

Data: At lest we're acquainted with the judge.

The Bajorans and Cardassians.

"The Wounded" features very different Cardassian military uniforms than appeared later in TNG, as well as a Cardassian with facial hair, something that never happened again.

The Bajoran makeup is slightly altered between "Ensign Ro" and later Bajoran characters, and Ro wears her earring on her left ear rather than her right, a practice favored by members of the Pah-wraith cult in DS9.Expanded universe The novels justified the latter as Ro not believing in the Prophets, and wearing her earring on the wrong ear to stop clergymen from trying to feel her pagh.

TNG makes no mention of the Prophets or the Bajoran religion in general.

Season 2's "Unnatural Selection" takes place at a Starfleet facility in which genetic research is being done to create super humans. It would be pointed out many times in the future, as well as on ''DS9'' and Enterprise that the Federation has a strict ban on any such research being done thanks to the Eugenics Wars.

Eating the Eye Candy: In "Angel One", when Riker comes out dressed in ridiculously revealing native clothing, Troi and Yar's reactions are priceless.

Eldritch Starship: The Edo God is dimensionally transcendent and the Farpoint lifeform is a massive shapeshifter that can take the form of a starship.

Embarrassing Ringtone: Worf's son Alexander joins his father aboard the Enterprise. Everybody was trying to reach Worf about his son through his communicator. Unfortunately, he was with Captain Picard who was explaining him some assignment. It looked like the communicators couldn't be turned off, and both Picard and Worf got really annoyed.

The Everyman: Reg Barclay. He's clearly not who you'd pick as the poster child for Starfleet, but in a crunch he's shows he's just as capable, if not more so, than the main characters. This is lampshaded by Picard;

Picard: And yet he chose this way of life. He's made the same commitment to Starfleet we all have.

Evil Me Scares Me: One of Data's earliest encounters with emotion was feeling hatred when fighting the Borg. The fact that this first emotion of his was a negative one and that he apparently enjoyed indulging in the furious killing of an enemy disturbed him. Then we get his Evil Twin Lore turning up who embraces his negative emotions and so personifies them to Data (and is in fact the cause of Data's sudden unleashing of emotion, editing them so he only gets the negative ones or feels what Lore wants him to - hence sadism). Data would probably have been scared of him, if fear hadn't been saved for a later episode.

Evil Twin: Lore, which usually gave Brent Spiner a chance to show off more of his range as an actor outside of the stoic Data character. Brent Spiner actually stated in an interview that he preferred playing Lore to playing Data. Why? Because "we have more in common."

The Evils of Free Will: There was an episode about a human colony that used Social and Genetic engineering to decide each person's profession before they were born (and tweak them to fit that role). It didn't seem that bad, as everyone loved their job and the rest of their freedoms were pretty well preserved. Until a number of them realized their society had stagnated, when the much more advanced Enterprise showed up. Then they wanted to leave, and the guardians of their colony tried to stop them.

Evolutionary Levels: "Genesis", which misinterprets evolution as a phenomenon that happens in individuals, as well as invoking the theory (discredited in the mid 20th century) that our DNA retains a record of our species' evolutionary tree. "The Chase" has some undertones of this as well, although it isn't Evolutionary Levels so much as Precursors with implausible sufficiently advanced skill at genetics. Plus any scene where someone mentions DNA breaking down into protein/amino acids, or vice versa.

Exposition of Immortality: In "Time's Arrow", a two-part episode of The Next Generation, the Enterprise crew runs into Guinan, the El-Aurian bartender on their ship, while on a Time Travel trip to the 19th century. She's shown talking with Mark Twain and Jack London; but when Data approaches her, believing that she too, has traveled through time, she doesn't know him or the rest of the crew.

Eye Lights Out: Data and his identical brother Lore have amber irises. In Lore's final episode when Data deactivates him for good his pupils shrink until they disappear, leaving his eyes blank and sightless.

Face Death with Dignity: Toral after he's captured at the end of the Klingon Civil War. He's clearly scared, but he doesn't beg for his life or attempt to flee. Oddly, this is actually a Pet the Dog moment for him since it signifies that, despite all his other flaws, his heart is Klingon.

Fake-Out Make-Out: In "Preemptive Strike", Ensign Ro goes undercover to infiltrate a Maquis resistance group, and passes on her information by meeting Captain Picard in a bar, where she tells him to pretend he's buying her sexual services. The whole thing is presented as quite uncomfortable for both of them, as while Ro shares some Belligerent Sexual Tension with Commander Riker, she's never had any with Picard whom she regards more as a stern Parental Substitute.

In the series 4 episode "Legacy" Tasha Yar's younger sister Ishara spends the first half of the episode wearing a thin white top and clearly no bra, several angles place her chest front & centre. She later changes into a Jumpsuit, however her aversion to underwear continues as she sports a very prominent cameltoe.

Captain Picard is the subject of an Alien Abduction along with several others, who conspire to escape. It turns out that one of them is really a member of the alien race which captured them all.

In another episode Deanna, O'Brien and Data are mentally taken over by noncorporeal beings who claim to be Starfleet officers who have crash landed on a world, but they're actually convicted prisoners.

There was an episode with an Aesop about homophobia delivered by a genderless species. Who were all played by women so that the audience wouldn't be subjected to Riker kissing someone played by a guynote FWIW, Jonathan Frakes pushed for the love interest to be played by a guy.

Dr. Pulaski is bigoted and condescending towards Data purely because he is a mechanic life-form, and it's clear from the beginning that she believes he's nothing more than a very advanced computer, even calling him a "device." She continues to act in a manner that would be considered reprehensible from a starfleet officer considering the social mores of the show.

Fantasy Keepsake: In "Pen Pals" Data becomes friends with a little girl named Sarjenka and saves her planet from earthquakes that would render said planet uninhabitable. In the end our crew is forced to wipe her memory before returning her to her home, but Data still puts a "singer stone" in her hand that she was admiring earlier, despite knowing that she won't remember where it came from.

The Farmer and the Viper: Q actually uses this against the crew when he's turned mortal by the continuum, choosing a human form and going to them for help, assuming that their values and willingness to forgive "almost any offense" will mean they are willing to protect him from the variety of less-moral creatures he has tormented in the past, and who are willing to take advantage of his newfound humanity. He's not entirely right in this assumption, but right enough for subverting this trope in "Viper part" too, when Data's sacrifice moved Q into an attempt to save the ship at the cost of his own life.

Fate Worse Than Death: For Klingons, this is what discommendation is. They are stripped of not only their personal honor, but also the honor of the next several generations of their entire family. Their House is forfeit and they are forbidden from interacting with most other Klingons.

Father, I Don't Want To Fight: Worf's son Alexander is adamant on not embracing the Klingon culture, having grown up in the peaceful, functional Federation one. This causes Worf much consternation, because he knows that Alexander will be eaten alive by Klingon politics the minute he inevitably tries to initiate reform. A time-traveling future Alexander indicates that this is exactly what happens and Worf was killed by a rival house as a result. In the present Worf consoles him that the time-traveler's presence has already begun to change their timeline.

Faux Action Girl: Tasha Yar had a habit of switching from regular Action Girl to Faux Action Girl almost on a whim. The first time she meets Q, she spends much of her time scowling and hitting people. The second time she meets Q, she spends much of her time crying and apologizing to the Captain for it.

In "Loud as a Whisper", Picard accidentally insults Riva when he asks a question to one of his chorus, quickly apologizing that he'd never encountered this form of communication and inadvertently breached protocol.note It's proper protocol that any time someone addresses a person through a translator—be it a foreign language or sign language—one is still supposed to speak to them directly and not to the translator, which Picard himself remarks on when later he tells a surprised Riker that they are translators and should be treated according to the protocol.

After admonishing his crew for calling Barclay "Broccoli" (behind his back), Picard accidentally uses the unfortunate nickname when addressing Barclay directly. Picard feels so badly that that the normally unflappable captain is quite flustered.

Fighting from the Inside: many incidents of this, usually when someone is under the imposed control of someone else (or even being turned into someone else) and is trying to fight for their self, identity and/or sanity. The archetypical example is Picard being turned into Locutus. In examples like Picard's this is also a form of Mind Rape, violating his mind, tearing away at the very fabric of his being, and turning it against him and the people he loves in the ultimate humiliation and pain. After Locutus, Picard tends to view such an experience as a Fate Worse Than Death (certainly so with the Borg).

A time traveler in an episode pulls this on Picard, saying how happy he is to be visiting the Enterprise. Picard, meanwhile, has a difficult decision to make and wants the time traveler to tell him how the decision turns out (the fate of a whole planet was at stake). The time traveler, naturally, refuses. Picard does make the right choice and saves everybody, but in an interesting subversion it turns out that the time traveler is bluffing about knowing how things come out: he was actually from the past and had stolen the time machine.

In the Series Finale "All Good Things...", Picard asks Q what he's really saying about humanity. Q begins to whisper something in his ear, then changes his mind, smiling broadly, bidding farewell, "In any case, I'll be watching. And if you're very lucky, I'll drop by to say hello from time to time. See you... out there!"

Fling a Light into the Future: A variation occurs in the episode "Cause and Effect"—the Enterprise is trapped in a "Groundhog Day" Loop where she's destined to collide with another ship and explode. Data figures out how to avoid the collision too late, so he uses Techno Babble to send a message into the next loop, which helps the crew save themselves and the other ship.

The tearjerkingly brilliant "The Inner Light", commonly seen as one of the best, tells the story of an alien race doomed by instability in their sun who send out a space probe that finds Picard and forces him to hallucinate living a lifetime among their final generations before the end, and thus ensures that their species will at least be remembered. It affected Picard and no other crew member. The life he lived involved getting married, having a family, and other things he's never made time for - taking it from a disturbing experience to something he sees as a gift.

The episode "The Chase" reveals that all humanoid life is this—a Precursor species that inhabited the Milky Way eons before life anywhere else was more complex than bacteria seeded planets all over the galaxy with DNA so that evolution there would result in people who resembled them after their eventual extinction. They left a message coded in DNA to explain all this. (This is less well-regarded by fans, since evolution does not work like that and it comes off as a justification for the Rubber-Forehead Aliens.)

In the episode "Haven", Deanna Troi wants to fulfill her arranged marriage promise to Wyatt Miller. He had given her a chameleon rose as a gift. It was blue when Miller held it and turned red, then white when Troi held it. It later turned purple while still in Troi's hands (which becomes Fridge Brilliance when you take into account that the marriage is called off when Wyatt found his fantasy lover, Ariana, aboard a Tarellian ship);

"In Theory" had Lieutenant Commander Data presenting a bunch of crystilia to Lieutenant Jenna D'Sora, when the two were "dating". Data's choice came from Commander William Riker's recommendation, since crystilia had "worked for him before";

In "Ménage à Troi", Dai Mon Tog presented a bouquet of pericules (aka zan periculi) to Lwaxana Troi while attempting to court her. Lwaxana tossed them in a nearby lake.

"Yesterday's Enterprise" shows how a previous Enterprise played a role so pivotal that its absence would cause the end of the Federation in a long, bloody and hopeless war.

"Tapestry" shows how Picard avoiding a fight in his youth would have changed his whole life.

Picard: There are many parts of my youth that I'm not proud of... there were loose threads... untidy parts of me that I would like to remove. But when I pulled on one of those threads... it had unraveled the tapestry of my life.

Former Teen Rebel: Captain Jean-Luc Picard was a delinquent and skirt-chaser at the Academy, culminating in a bar fight with a group of Proud Warrior Race Guys in which he got stabbed in the heart. After that, he apparently became rather more focused.

Fountain of Youth: "Rascals", in which a transporter malfunction turns Picard, Keiko, Ro and Guinan into children, during which time the Enterprise is captured by hostile aliens. Despite the fact that they clearly keep their adult minds, they still have to save the day using childlike cleverness rather than their usual methods. As children, they would lack the strength and speed to do many of the physical actions an adult could perform.

Freud Was Right: invoked Inverted in "Phantasms", when Data recreates Dr. Freud in the holodeck with the hope of interpreting the disturbing images generated by his dream program. Freud, of course, proceeds to assume it's all about Data's issues with his mother and his sexuality, neither of which he has, because he's an android.

From a Single Cell: lots of instances of this too, where a single biological or mechanical cell (or unit) multiplies and creates an entire being, consciousness, species, or, in one case, civilization (although that started from 2 nanite cells not one).

The Future Is Noir: The first two seasons often had this; the Enterprise bridge was usually floodlit, but everywhere else tended to have very minimal lighting levels. Inverted starting with the third season, when the lighting became uniformly bright and vivid.

Future Me Scares Me: In "Time Squared", the present Jean-Luc Picard is disgusted, irritated and extremely angered by the Captain Picard of the future, who abandoned the Enterprise in a shuttlecraft shortly before its destruction.

Future Spandex: Early-season uniforms; later seasons replaced them with something looser. This was a case of Real Life Writes the Plot. The original jumpsuits were so tight and form-fitting that they were rather uncomfortable; Patrick Stewart once mentioned that, "they... hurt." Because of this, the jumpsuits were replaced with high-necked tops and pants (at least for the main cast; background characters still wore the one-piece jumpsuits, which were later modified slightly to better resemble the main cast's uniforms).

Gaining the Will to Kill: In "The Most Toys," Kivas Fajo's taunts backfire when he convinces Data that the only way to stop him is to kill him.

Data: I cannot permit this to continue.

Gambler's Fallacy: In order to escape "The Royale", Data needs to bankrupt the house by winning at the craps tables; being an android, he can detect the loaded dice, fixes them in his hand, and can roll straight sevens. One of the other gamblers believes Data's luck has to run out sooner or later and bets against him. Of course, luck has nothing to do with it.

Gaslighting: A famous example in "Chain of Command," in which the Cardassians use psychological torture to try to persuade Picard to say there are five lights in the room when in fact there are four.

Geeky Turn-On: In "The Perfect Mate," a metamorph (female who automatically becomes whatever the man she's speaking to most desires) gets Picard's interest by talking about archaeology. And Shakespeare.

There are a few instances of Picard using swear words in French that would never have been allowed on network TV if they were in English, most notably "merde" (French for 'shit').

Another example of radar dodging is in "Masks". One scene involves Picard examining some artifacts, and when he grabs a rather phallic one, it is positioned suspiciously close to his crotch. Patrick Stewart also makes sure to put extra special focus on the word "enormous" in the speech he gives while holding the Freudian artifact. Jonathan Frakes is doing his best not to smirk during this whole scene.

And from the episode "The Naked Now":

Data:—And there was a rather peculiar limerick being delivered by someone in the shuttlecraft bay. I'm not sure I understand it. 'There was a young lady from Venus, whose body was shaped like a...'"

And in the episode "Genesis", Neanderthal Riker can be seen flipping the bird for about 2 seconds.

Girl of the Week: This trope was in full force with Riker, especially in the first and second seasons. And then it got reversed, and Troi had a Guy Of The Week going on for several seasons, and she and Riker seemed to share the volume of temporary romantic interests during that time.

A God Am I: Q plays with this in "Tapestry". Picard dies and enters the "afterlife", where he finds Q awaiting him, who informs him that he's dead and that Q himself is God. Picard rejects this, because he doesn't think that "the Universe is so badly designed". Q snarks that Picard is lucky Q doesn't smite him for his blasphemy.

God for a Day: "Hide and Q"- Q gives such powers to Riker and makes, unknown to Riker, a bet with Picard: Picard thinks that Riker will reject Q's offer and bets the Enterprise herself on him against Q offering to never bother them again. A generally well done example of the trope with the resolution not coming out of some arbitrary limit or failure of the powers. Picard wins after Riker finds every gift he tries to give to his friends rings hollow.

"But it's what you've always wanted Data, to become human."

"Yes, sir. That is true. But I never wanted to compound one... illusion with another. It might be real to Q,... perhaps even you, sir. But it would never be so to me. Was it not one of the Captain's favourite authors who wrote, "This above all: to thine own self be true?" Sorry, Commander, I must decline."

God Test: Inverted in "Who Watches the Watchers." When the primitive alien tribe believes that Picard is God, they try to prove it by shooting him with a bow to prove that he can't be killed. Fortunately for Picard the alien misses his heart, but does hit him in the shoulder, injuring him and thereby proving to the aliens that he isn't God.

Gone Horribly Right: In "The Arsenal of Freedom", the EP-607, an automated weapons system designed to operate with total autonomy. It's effective enough to have wiped out everyone on the planet of its invention.

Good Powers, Bad People: In one episode, Deanna Troi meets a man who is a quarter Betazoid, and who, like her, has empathic powers. He uses his abilities to win in political and economic negotiations. Troi calls him out on it, but he fires back that where he's using his natural abilities to come out on top in property transactions, just like the people he makes deals with, Troi uses her abilities to increase the lethal capacity of a warship, often against beings with no way of resisting her.

Gorn: The death and destruction of Cmdr. Dexter Remmick and the mother parasite inside him in the first season episode "Conspiracy" caused much controversy when it first aired.

Government Drug Enforcement: The former plague cure that became a narcotic in "Symbiosis" plus the 21st-century drug-addled supersoldier Q conjures up in "Encounter at Farpoint".

Great Gazoo: Q has a bad habit of using his powers to mess around with the Enterprise crew, much to Picard's annoyance.

Green Aesop: "Force of Nature" focuses on how overuse of warp drive is causing permanent damage to the fabric of space and creating climate change on a planet exposed to the damaged areas.

"Groundhog Day" Loop: "Cause and Effect" - Actually occurred two years in advance of the Groundhog Day movie. Unlike the Groundhog Day movie (in which Bill Murray's character is fully aware of what's going on, and only once does anybody else mention a slight feeling of deja vu— everyone on the Enterprise, except Data, starts to get that feeling.

Grow Beyond Their Programming: Data, Moriarty and the nanomachines in "Evolution." There's also some indication (and certainly one that is reinforced in Voyager and DS9) that the more complex holograms are and/or the longer they are left on, the more they grow beyond their programming and start to attain self-aware states. The accumulation of experience eventually leads to consciousness and independent thought (of a kind), presumably as the programs become more and more complex over time until they reach a critical mass point of awareness.

Harmless Villain: The Ferengi. Despite the original intention for them to be the Big Bad, it soon became clear that the audience found them so laughably incompetent, they doubted they could find water in an oasis, let alone possibly take over the Federation.

Have You Tried Rebooting?: In the end, the simple solution to the Iconian computer virus threatening to destroy the Enterprise in "Contagion" was to shut down the computer and reboot the system from protected memory.

Heart in the Wrong Place: An inversion combined with the same inversion of Bizarre Alien Biology can be found in the episode "First Contact." Riker is beaten pretty badly and is hospitalized on an alien planet that does not believe in aliens. He was on an away mission and altered to look like them, but in the hospital, they note that his "cardiac organ" is in the wrong place as well as many other anatomical abnormalities.

Hide Your Gays: Yes Star Trek is about tolerance, but even at that time, homosexuality could only be portrayed through metaphor.

Through no fault of the writers or actors, however; they tried several times, and Whoopi Goldberg even changed some of her dialog. When explaining the concept of love to Lal, which was initially written from a purely heterosexual viewpoint, she pointed out that homosexuality would not be stigmatized in the 24th century of Star Trek, and so the lines were changed to be more gender-neutral and inclusive. However, a plan to have a same-sex couple in the background in that scene was nixed by someone on the set calling out the producers in secret, who stood around to make sure that nothing slipped by. The issue would have to wait for Deep Space Nine to get any real exposure at all.

This gets brought up in the episode where Crusher has a Trill lover. She goes through the death of his host, discovering his nature as a symbiote, and even gets past the symbiote temporarily implanted into Riker, someone she never had romantic (or sexual for that matter) intentions to, learning to rediscover the person she loves even when he's wearing Riker's skin, all because the strength of their love gets past these huge obstacles. She's all ready to be with him when he gets implanted into a new host no matter who that host is... until the host walks through the door and it's a woman. The Unfortunate Implications aren't just limited to LGBT this time.

Hoist by His Own Petard: The kidnapping aliens in "Allegiance" are placed in a restraining field on the bridge to give them a taste of their own medicine. To put it mildly, they didn't like it; they were practically having a panic attack.

Hollywood Dateless: More than any other series, the Enterprise-D crew had rotten love lives. (With the exception of Riker. In fact, Number One was so well-adjusted that he rarely carried an episode by himself.)

Picard was firmly established as Married to the Job early on, despite harboring intense feelings for Beverly. "Lessons" showed us why he must never act on those impulses: He attempted a relationship with one astrophysicist, only to order her to her death. Just as he had with Jack Crusher, Beverly's late husband. As a Captain, he cannot fraternize too closely with people whose lives he might one day forfeit.

invoked Data attempted a domestic relationship in one episode, and it was a total wash. All of his Uncanny Valley mannerisms came out in a creepily stilted kiss. ("In Theory")

Geordi has incredibly bad mojo with women, to the point where if you ignored Dr. Brahams, he could easily pass for homosexual. Even Wesley one claimed to have had better luck with women than Geordi. The reason is not entirely clear; Geordi is honest to the point of folly, which often blows up in his face. LeVar Burton was perplexed about all this, although he has stated in interviews that Geordi's datelessness was due to the fact that the writers didn't know how to write black male sexuality.

In "A Matter Of Perspective," a holographic reconstruction of a science station used as part of a hearing as to whether Riker is to be extradited on murder charges unintentionally begins damaging Enterprise as it continues the experiments on its own.

"A Fistful of Datas" finds Worf, Alexander and Troi trapped in a holodeck simulation of the "Ancient West," where almost all of the characters are replaced by simulations of Data. Including his greatly enhanced strength, intelligence, speed, and reflexes.

Moriarty reappears in "Ship In A Bottle," and manages to take control of Enterprise to force Picard's hand in finding a way to allow him to leave the holodeck.

In "Emergence", the first problem came when the Orient Express travels through Data's play of the Tempest on the Holodeck. This led them to realize the ship was forming an intelligence with the holodeck acting as a form of its imagination which didn't take kindly to them trying to interfere.

How We Got Here: In the episode "Suspicions", Beverly is telling Guinan how she got into professional trouble for most of the episode.

Humanity Ensues: The Continuum once meted out this punishment to Q. By the end of the episode he was back to his all-powerful Reality Warping self again.

Humanity Is Infectious: Hugh from "I, Borg" seems to fit this one to a degree. And after he's returned to The Collective, his acquired humanity spreads to every drone on his ship, which is quickly severed from the rest of the hive-mind lest it cause a Galactic BSOD.

Technically, the whole series, the movies, and everything else in the Star Trek universe. As Q points out the trial that starts in "Encounter at Farpoint" continues through "All Good Things..." and beyond.

There are shipping lanes which are the most frequently used ways of getting from point A to point B. At one point late in the series it's revealed that space is actually wearing down in those lanes; Starfleet sets a speed limit of warp five to minimize continued damage, but then they weasel out of that by giving authorization to exceed speed limits right and left.

In the finale, "All Good Things", even relatively low-tech medical ships easily travel at warp 13, even though the Federation's speed limit was warp 5. Either the Federation figured out how to reduce the damage from their warp drives, or the writers forgot about the speed limit.

The USS Voyager had "variable warp field geometry" to minimize damage to space/time. This is why the nacelles moved before it jumped into warp, but it was stated in later episodes of Voyager and Deep Space Nine that the technology was being retrofitted to older ships with fixed-mounted nacelles. Medical ships travelling at warp 13 are still probably a writer memory lapse, considering that it was stated many times that warp 10 represents infinite speed and requires infinite energy to attain. The only possible explanation for warp 13 would be that they switch to a different speed scale in the future.

Word of God says that Warp 13 was used intentionally as a hint of new developments in warp technology in the alternate future.

Hyperspeed Ambush: The "Picard Maneuver", where a ship (typically already engaged in battle) would use its warp drive to make a very short trip to another part of the battlefield. If done properly, this allowed a starship commander to allow his ship to appear in two places simultaneously, because the sensor return from the ship's previous location had not yet gotten back to the enemy ship. This tactic was notably of limited use, only being effective against enemies who did not possess subspace sensors.

Hyperspeed Escape: Quite a few times, given the ubiquitousness of Warp Drive in this setting (as a general rule, if you don't have warp drive, nobody in Starfleet is terribly interested in dealing with you anyways). Occasionally subverted, either because the pursuing ship is faster, or because the heroes are trapped inside some sort of Negative Space Wedgie and literally have nowhere they can go.

In "Ensign Ro", when Riker chastises Ro Laren for wearing her Bajoran earring, only to subsequently take her into a meeting where Troi was wearing her low-cut, non-regulation uniform and Worf is proudly wearing his Klingon baldric.

Dr. Crusher qualifies for this in her application of medical ethics. Repeatedly the way she carries out her duty of care is flawed (self-oriented rather than patient-oriented, and picking and choosing what elements of her duty of care to adhere to as it suits her), her ethical approach hypocritical or one sided, often valuing sheer survival over patient autonomy, privacy, rights, their personal and cultural values, and their own choices (patient autonomy being one of the core values of medical care), and even blaming other people - often others she has duty of care over - for their decisions and/or when they are involved with the death of someone under her care (which she has no right to do).

In one instance an injured Romulan is brought aboard the Enterprise and requires Worf's ribozomes for neuronal and cellular repair. Worf refuses to donate his ribozomes on grounds of his own morality, and the patient refuses the donation anyway out of hatred for Klingons. Crusher disregards the values of both and their right to choose, and not only repeatedly presses Worf to donate, intending to donate the ribozomes to the Romulan against his will, but she even blames him for the death of the Romulan, repeatedly harassing him over his decision, bringing Worf into sickbay to watch him die, and continuing to firmly blame him afterwards for the death. All of this is in violation of her duty of care as ship's physician and hypocritical in terms of medical ethics.

In "Suddenly Human" the Enterprise comes across a ship of injured adolescent aliens on a training exercise with a human amidst them, who identifies as one of the aliens and wants to go back with them "home." Crusher sees evidence of past injuries and instead of taking into account the culture - a militant civilization which trains children from a young age to be soldiers/warriors - or what the boy says, or interviewing the other alien boys with him, or evaluating whether the other boys have similar injuries, or asking to speak to the person in charge of the boy's care, she immediately and conclusively determines that the boy was brutalised and abused, has Stockholm Syndrome, and needs to be rescued and introduced to a proper "human" way of life. Of course in the end it turns out that the boy was found and brought up by a loving family who didn't ill-treat him, the injuries were a result of the training the boys go through and quite common, and Crusher's assumptions and presumptions were harmful and traumatic.

In "Ethics" when Worf is injured leaving him paralysed from the waist down, Dr. Crusher doesn't listen to what Worf wants, his cultural and personal bias, his requirements for adequate quality of life or respect his autonomy, instead she not only condescendingly decides what he should want and what he should do, she compromises one of the core tenants of medical ethics and decides which options for treatment he should want and does not even inform him of all his options. She even gets angry at the spinal specialist who comes onboard because she does tell Worf all his options, putting Crusher in the uncomfortable position of performing a life-threatening procedure which is outside her comfort zone. It takes Picard having to explain to Crusher her own patient's wishes and needs, which shows just how warped and egocentric her view of medicine has become. Of course Dr. Crusher then goes on to lecture the visiting spinal doctor on her hypocritical medical practices... without realizing how she herself is repeatedly putting her own needs and desires in front of her patient's.

In "The Drumhead" when Picard proclaims that it's intrusive to use a Betazoid to discern if someone is lying, Admiral Satie throws it right back in his face that he uses Troi to do it all the time. To his credit, Picard concedes the point and replies that he might reconsider this policy in the future.

In "Ethics" Dr. Crusher turns on another Doctor for trying unconventional techniques to save someone's life, accusing her of choosing which treatments to give based on her own bias. When she questions this doctor's judgement she says "I made the choice that I thought gave him the best chance of surviving, isn't that what you would have done?" Meanwhile Crusher is doing the exact same thing in Worf's case: picking and choosing which options to give him... except Worf isn't unconscious, and Crusher is ignoring his opinions and patient autonomy nonetheless. This is the only "nod" to Crusher's hypocrisy when it comes to medical ethics.

Also overlaps with literalGeneration Xerox as Data and Lore were designed to resemble their creator Dr. Noonien Soong. Its later revealed that he was also an Identical Grandson of Dr. Arik Soong from Enterprise.

There's an episode where Lwaxana Troi is fascinated by someone she cannot read. He turns out to be a hologram, which quite embarrasses her.

Similarly, the telepath from the episode "Tin Man" spends a lot of time with Data, whose mind he cannot read. The difference here is that, unlike Lwaxana, he can't not read minds, while Lwaxana just has almost no sense of personal space in that regard. He loves having to discover who Data is as a person rather than being thrust with all that information at once.

If You Can Read This: Many examples; the set designers had a lot of fun adding in easter eggs. See the trope page for details.

I Lied: "Captain's Holiday" - Beverly is trying to convince Captain Picard to take a vacation. Picard is adamant, and she tells him that it's going on a vacation that he hates, but once he gets there, he has a great time. She reminds him of him telling her about how he had a great time during his four days on Zytchin III, to which he replies "I lied." Given that he's trying to wheedle desperately out of the vacation, this itself is likely a lie.

In "Q-Pid", Q turns the bridge crew into Robin Hood and his merry men. Geordi becomes the Alan a-Dale analog, and keeps plucking annoyingly at a lute. Finally Worf has had enough, walks up, snatches the lute and smashes it against a tree.

Indy Ploy: Exemplified in the 2nd season episode Peak Performance, Riker is a master of using these whenever he has to take command. It becomes a Chekhov's Skill when Riker is in charge of the Enterprise the second time they face the Borg.

I Need to Go Iron My Dog: In the episode "Menage a Troi", Lwaxana Troi wants to spend time with Picard. Picard, preferring to be light years away, explains that he needs to show the VIP with him the door mechanism on the aft turbolift.

For the tactical officer Worf seemed to be a terrible shot both with the ship's weapons and his own phaser. Not all of this can be attributed to The Worf Effect or the necessity of the script - in one episode he's practicing on the phaser range and gets easily beaten by Guinan (although she's had a lot more years to practice, and explicitly tells him she's been doing this since before he was born). Although when he's asked to target specific parts of ships, he delivers nine times out of ten.

Although a further nine times out of ten, this results in (what could be considered) one of Worf's catchphrases:

"Direct hit, no effect"

Data is repeatedly said, and sometimes shown, to be, by human standards, extremely strong, fast, and quick-thinking. However, these traits are noticeably absent on a number of occasions where they would have been of great use; specifically, any hand-to-hand or short-range combat involving Data should, by all rights, be over in about five seconds with all hostile parties neutralized.

We rarely see Troi's counseling skills in private sessions. Her counseling sessions are only shown on-screen to either elucidate someone's plot-relevant personal/psychological problem - and this is done rarely - or, more commonly, to reveal that some issue Troi is having is affecting her ability to do her job, which normally results in her abusing the poor patient by being overtly condescending, downright hostile, or just acting really strangely. Typically when someone has a problem they need help with, they are shown talking to Guinan for advice, who uses her position as bar-tender to full effect (usually using some tough-love to manipulate or force someone to face their problems).

Starfleet believes itself to exist purely for exploration and that it isn't a military, despite the fact that it operates more or less in accord with a military code of conduct, and is the only defense organization the Federation has.

Insignificant Little Blue Planet: "Encounter at Farpoint" and "Where No Man Has Gone Before". Only now does humanity merit some attention by Q Continuum and the Traveller’s people: prior to this we were too uninteresting.

Klingon Worf was taken in and lovingly raised by Sergey and Helena Rozhenko, a human couple. Later on, the Rozhenkos also took in their primarily Klingon grandson, Alexander, when Worf decided that being a single father aboard the Enterprise would be too difficult for him to handle.

In "Suddenly Human" the Enterprise away team finds a human teen boy serving on a training ship of another race, the Talarians. It was discovered he was taken as a baby after a raid by the Talarians, he was raised by a member of the military, who captained a starship. The question became whether to take him back to Earth to live with family (and threaten a war) or allow him to stay with the only family he had ever known.

Intimate Artistry: In "The High Ground", when the Enterprise is visiting the planet Rutia IV Dr. Crusher is kidnapped by a terrorist group. While she is being held captive, the group's leader draws sketches of her, which indicates both that he has artistic sensibilities (and is therefore more complex than simply "evil") and that he is growing attracted to her.

"It" Is Dehumanizing: The series has done this several times, usually in regards to the android Commander Data.

In the season 1 episode "Datalore", where Captain Picard at first felt inclined to refer to Data as "he", and to Data's newly-discovered twin brother Lore as "it". Data called him out on this, and felt uncomfortable at the idea of them being referred to differently when they were both androids. Picard understood and apologized.

When Dr. Pulaski first saw Data at the helm, she balked at the captain: "You're letting it pilot the ship?" upon which Picard laid a verbal smackdown on her. Given the fact that Data was so popular with the fans, having a one-off character treat him like a machine quickly became shorthand for telling the audience that a character was an asshole, this scene probably was enough to doom Pulaski's character terminally.

In "The Measure Of A Man", an episode discussing Data's legal status; Commander Maddox constantly refers to Data as a possession of Starfleet and therefore an "it", until he slips into "he" after a court hearing formally rules that Data has free will and the right to choose.

It Will Never Catch On: In a meta example, Patrick Stewart was so certain this series would fail that for the first six weeks of shooting he refused to unpack his suitcases. Indeed, he's said in subsequent interviews that he only took the job because he thought it would merely be a temporary adventure.

I Thought Everyone Could Do That: In "Heart of Glory", when they use a device to transmit the view from Geordi's VISOR back to the Bridge, Picard expresses surprise that Data appears to be glowing with a subtle aura. Geordi expresses surprise that no one else can see it.

I Would Say If I Could Say: Data uses this on occasion based on emotions he cannot actually experience. Once he comments upon visiting his "birth" planet that he would say "Home, sweet home" if only he knew what "sweet" really was. Another time he mentions that he would find a procedure insulting if he were not an android (and thus incapable of feeling insulted).

Jerk Ass: Q and most of the Cardassians that show up. The Cardassian culture actually valuesJerk Ass qualities.

Jerkass Has a Point: In the sixth season episode "Rascals", the leader of a group of Ferengi boarders points out to Riker that having children on a starship that regularly sees action and violence might not be such a great idea. He's not wrongnote Some of this is due to the fact that the Enterprise was supposed to detach the civilian-occupied saucer section a lot more when heading into dangerous situations, but budgetary and timing constraints prevented it.

"Measure of a Man". Fortunately for Data, they decide that no, he's not. It should be noted that the the judge's ruling is extremely specific: That Data is not the property of Starfleet. The ruling actually avoids addressing his sentience, innate freewill and status as a life form. Data, both before and after the trial, viewed Soong-type androids as unique life forms, as does most of the crew.

In the episode "The Quality of Life" the crew discovers that a repair robot might be sophisticated enough to be considered alive.

"Emergence": The Enterprise computer begins using the ship's replicators and transporters to change its own circuitry around, culminating in the creation of some sort of offspring. Unfortunately, this premise mostly took place in a broken holodeck simulation.

Just Between You and Me: A lot of enemy plots are foiled when their plans are revealed, only to have the crew member in question escape and foil the whole thing.

Just Ignore It: The Stone of Gol in "Gambit": a device that can kill anyone with a single thought. However, being a Vulcan invention, it only works on the aggressive.

The solanogen-based lifeforms in "Schisms", who experimented on several crewmembers and caused the death of one of them, weren't really retaliated against. The crew simply sealed the rift into their universe. The writers decided they looked too non-threatening to ever be brought back, too.

Vulcan Ambassador T'Pel who is really a Romulan spy called Sub-Commander Selok in "Data's Day".

Taibak, the Romulan scientist who brutally tortured and brainwashed Geordi in "The Mind's Eye".

Kill and Replace: One episode had a Monster of the Week who was described as a "coalescent organism", a shapeshifter that preyed on other lifeforms by eating all their biomass and then assuming their forms to be beneath suspicion before it repeats the process. Interestingly, the two people suspected of being the coalescent turn out to be innocent, and it's revealed to have taken the shape of a dog.

Klingon Promotion: Trope Namer. First explained in "A Matter of Honor" that an acceptable method of promotion on a Klingon ship is to kill one's superior if the superior has done something to deserve it.

Klingon Scientists Get No Respect: "Suspicions" is the Trope Namer, featuring a Klingon scientist named Kurak who is very touchy for this reason. She's at a private demonstration for the research of a Ferengi scientist named Reyga who hopes to overcome his race's stereotypical image and be taken seriously in the scientific community.

Reyga: "After all, a Ferengi scientist is almost a contradiction in terms!"

The show killed off Tasha Yar in the first season episode "Skin of Evil". Denise Crosby left the show because she felt her character didn't have enough to do in the episodes. The producers probably felt that there were too many characters anyway and needed to trim the cast a bit. So they apparently took it pretty well. In fact, they worked with Crosby to make her departing episode special in terms of Star Trek, the show that was responsible for the Redshirt trope. Also, driven home is the fact that Yar's death was somewhat pointless and understated and not the type of dramatic heroic death usually reserved for main characters. But then, there was the episode Yesterday's Enterprise which ressurects her in a way (only to kill her again) but in an alternate timeline.

Spock's father Sarek, who'd first appeared in the original series nearly 25 years earlier, died in "Unification I".

Knight of Cerebus: Prior to late Season 2, the crew had always managed to beat the threat of the week via some combination of diplomacy, tactics, and technology. Then the Borg were introduced, and became the number one ultimate threat to the Federation for the entire series, despite only appearing in six episodes. In their first encounter with the Borg, the Enterprise was utterly defeated and on the verge of being dissected and assimilated before Q rescued themnote After having exposed them to the Borg in the first place in order to give them a kick in their complacency..

Knight Templar: Nora Satie in "The Drumhead". Satie's inquiry into possible sabotage quickly devolves into an ever widening witch hunt. The Kangaroo Court becomes such a farce that one of the presiding officers simply stands up and walks out of the proceedings.

Lampshade Hanging: In "Ensigns of Command", while getting more and more frustrated in attempting to deal with the Sheliak— or even communicate effectively with them at all— Picard exclaims, "Ludicrous!" Troi calmly replies, "No, sir, the fact that any alien race communicates with another is quite remarkable."

Language Barrier: In "Darmok", the crew encounters friendly aliens called the Tamarians who communicate solely in metaphors and cultural references. The Universal Translator completely failsnote Specifically, it does translate their words, it just can't interpret the metaphors the words describe into regular speech. It takes almost the whole episode for Picard and the Tamarian captain to understand each other.

Laser-Guided Karma: In "The Price," the Federation and other powers are bidding on the rights to a wormhole. One of the diplomats, in league with the Ferengi, uses underhanded tactics to get the other delegates to drop out and secure the rights, with preferential treatment to Ferengi shipping. However, right afterwards, it's found that the wormhole is not as stable as was thought and so is completely useless.

Late-Arrival Spoiler: The season four episode "The Host" is about how there's something odd with Beverly's now boyfriend, an alien called a "Trill." The reveal is the surprise revelation that inside of him is a symbiotic organism, which has the memories of its previous hosts, and can survive after the host dies. This is a complete shock... unless you've seen Deep Space Nine, which has a Trill as one of the main cast and frequently makes mention of the Symbiote's abilities.

Late to the Tragedy: "Night Terrors." The Brittain's crew sends out a distress call and the Enterprise finds them 29 days later. The ship is adrift, most of the crew have gone insane and killed each other, and the only survivor is in a catatonic state and unable to explain what happened on the ship.

Leitmotif: Aside from the standard Alexander Courage fanfare, which shows up throughout the series, and Jerry Goldsmith's TMP theme, which was featured in a few early episodes, Ron Jones wrote several, which he used in the episodes he scored.

The Enterprise and her crew had a three note motif, similar to a cue from TOS, which appeared in the first two seasons.

For Worf and the Klingons, he used a truncated, brassy variant of Jerry Goldsmith's Klingon theme.

The Romulans had a sinister, repeating, four note motif which was introduced in The Neutral Zone and appeared in many episodes after, featuring prominently in The Defector.

One of the themes used to represent the Borg in The Best of Both Worlds got its start in Q Who?, cropping up in the climax of the episode.

Let's Duet: In "Lessons", the normally reserved Captain Picard finds himself opening up to a female officer though their shared love of music. In a notable scene, they find a Jeffries tube with good acoustics and (with her on a portable piano keyboard and Picard on the flute) play a duet based on the tune he learned in "The Inner Light". The scene ends in their first kiss.

Riker has been up for promotion around seven times. He refuses because he feels it is more prestigious to be First Officer aboard the Enterprise than Captain of any other ship. He finally leaves the Enterprise to be Captain of the Titan in the last movie after 14 years of being the Enterprise First Officer.

Picard is overly qualified for Admiral rank, and has been pushed there many times. He refuses because he joined Starfleet to explore, not to sit behind a desk on Earth or a starbase somewhere. This creates the odd situation of Admiral Janeway giving him orders in Nemesis, despite the fact he is substantially more qualified and experienced. Meanwhile, the aforementioned admiral has plenty of reason to prefer a nice quiet desk job. That said, it should be noted that Picard is often treated as a de facto Admiral. For example, in Star Trek: First Contact, when the Enterprise-E arrives at the battle with the Borg cube and finds that the Admiral leading the fleet has been killed, Picard summarily takes command of the entire fleet — and nobody questions it!note Considering the Enterprise is the flagship of the fleet, that means Picard is by definition considered to be one of the most capable and qualified captains they have. The rest of the fleet would know this, and defer to his experience.

A Final Unity follows in the footsteps of the 25th AnniversaryAdventure games based on TOS. The ship mechanics are expanded, with the player even able to eject the warp core if need be. The options are so exhaustive, you are free to meddle around other bases and star systems at will, though it accomplishes basically nothing.

Generations, based on the movie, is an FPS in which you chase Dr. Soran from planet to planet, always narrowly missing him. The Stellar Cartography room (used by Picard and Data in the film) also comes into play, with the player trying to predict where Soran will land next a la Carmen Sandiego.

Future's Past is essentially a console port of A Final Unity, though the away missions are stripped-down to a basic top-down shooter. Everything else is intact, including the multitude of window-dressing worlds to visit and the tactical battle system. One drawback of the 2-D gameplay is that the three-dimension space battles are now essentially dogfights, with the biggest risk being running out of ammo. (Enemies have infinite ammo.)

Birth of the Federation is a Turn-Based Strategy game with five playable empires: The Federation, Romulan Empire, Cardassian Union, Klingon Empire, and Ferengi Alliance (back when the Ferengi were still purportedly a threat).

Literal Change of Heart: Picard has an artificial heart as a result of a fight in which he was stabbed in the chest. During a near-death experience in a later episode, he was asked by Q if he would like to change that part of his past that led to that; however, by doing so, he wound up becoming a person who never developed any guts or took any risks.

Tasha Yar. Her character's complete lack of usefulness is what led Denise Crosby to leave the show near the end of the first season.

In many ways, Deanna Troi filled this role too. She was always being possessed by aliens, abused by aliens in crashed shuttles, abducted by aliens for political gambits, being nearly forced to marry an alien, having her psychic powers robbed by aliens, suffering nightmares at the hands of aliens, forced to listen to a virtual music box in her head for days by an alien, the list goes on. Her only real use on the show was to counsel the random crew member of the week and to tell Picard when she sensed weird things happening while on the bridge. Maybe this makes her closer to Butt Monkey. Troi did manage to Take a Level in Badass during a two-episode arc where she was sent to spy on the Romulans... but left that level somewhere for the rest of the series, never to be seen again. Those episodes are the reason A Day in the Limelight used to be named "Good Troi Episode".

Long Bus Trip: At the end of Unification, Part 2, Sela is still alive and well, though presumably she will be demoted and possibly imprisoned because of her failure. Many viewers expected her to return in later Romulan-centric stories (such as Star Trek: Nemesis), but she never did.

Losing Horns: Riker plays these unintentionally at the start of "Future Imperfect".

Lost Aesop: The episode "The Masterpiece Society" involves the Enterprise contacting an isolationist human colony that is about to be destroyed by a stellar fragment. However, exposure to the outside universe causes some colonists to ultimately decide to leave, which is damaging to their carefully structured society. Picard spends much of the episode disapproving of their closed, meticulously planned culture. Then at the end he agonizes over the fact despite saving it from utter destruction, contact with them has irreparably altered that culture. Even more bizarre when contrasted with the earlier episode "Up the Long Ladder", wherein Picard and company enthusiastically, indeed almost gleefully, imposed change on not one, but two "backwards" human colonies that they similarly disapproved of.

"Future Imperfect": Riker is trapped in a Lotus Eater Machine by a benevolent captor who just wants to be friends with him. When he realizes it the first time, it creates a second Lotus Eater Machine, in which he's a prisoner of a recurring enemy Romulan who was behind the first one as well. Both times, inconsistencies in the simulation are what tip Riker off.

"Ship In A Bottle". During one of Data's Sherlock Holmes holodeck adventures, Moriarty gains actual sentience. He then theorizes that he must have come to life, and he should be able to leave the holodeck, which he does. The rest of the episode is Data and Picard trying to figure out what's going on until they realize everybody on the Enterprise suddenly is left handed, like Moriarty. They manage to escape the program, and create a small subroutine so that Moriarty, still living in his dream, can dream it for as long as he wants with the love he found in his Lotus Eater Machine, and a simulation of the entire galaxy to explore.

M-P

Made of Evil: Armus, the eponymous skin in "Skin of Evil", is a being made up of an entire civilization's discarded negative thoughts and emotions. He also killed Tasha Yar.

"It would be ILLOGICAL for a Vulcan to show ANGER! ILLOGICAL! ILLOGICAL! ILLOGICAL!! ILLOGICAL!!

Magic Pants: In the episode "Rascals", Picard, Ensign Ro, Keiko, and Guinan are in a transporter accident that beams them onto the Enterprise as 12-year-old children while their clothes all shrink to fit their child bodies perfectly. In the end, They show Picard turned back into an adult with the transporter and again, his clothes grow with him. Even Picard's artificial heart must be magical!

In the future portion of "All Good Things" it's revealed that Jean-Luc Picard and Beverly Crusher got married...and divorced.

When Worf visited an alternate universe he discovered that he had formed a relationship with Deanna there. When he returned to his universe he decided to pursue it.

Matron Chaperone: In "The Dauphin", Salia, the future queen of Daled IV, is accompanied by her governess Anya, who is very protective of her. When Wesley is attracted to Salia and they get together, Anya turns into a giant monster and breaks into Wesley's cabin to stop them.

Matryoshka Object: In "The Chase", Picard's old archeology professor brings him a Kurlan naiskos as a gift. An ancient relic, the figure opens up to reveal several smaller versions of the figure inside.

Meaningful Name: "Data" is named for a word that means "facts and statistics". His evil twin is named "Lore", which means "superstition and legend", thus marking him as Data's symbolic opposite.

The Meaning of Life: In the episode "The Offspring," the android Data constructs a "daughter" named Lal who asks him what her purpose or function is. He replies that it is to "contribute in a positive way to the world in which they live." This just raises further questions.

Mechanistic Alien Culture: The Bynars and the Borg. The Borg were a Hive Mind of cybernetic life forms; the Bynars were linked into binary pairs and thought and spoke Binary language. Borg forcibly assimilate technology and people; the worst the Bynars ever did was hijack the Enterprise for a couple hours.

Mega Manning: The Borg have the ability to rapidly analyze and assimilate technology and knowledge from other species. It is at the very core of their philosophy. As a result, most newly designed weapons or tactics will only be effective for a short period of time, until the Borg have seen enough to adapt their defenses in response.

In the episode "Tapestry", Picard dies and to his horror is greeted by Q in the afterlife. After admitting that he regrets a lot of his brash actions as a young man, Q sends him back to the incident that gave Picard his artificial heart so he can change things.

In the series finale "All Good Things", Picard finds himself continuously shifting between three seperate timelines, one in the "present", one several years ago when the Enterprise was just launched, and one several decades in the future when Picard is mostly retired.

Mexican Standoff: A staple of later seasons. There is plenty of exposition at gun/disruptor/phaser-point.

Mildly Military: The Federation, much more so than during the TOS era, and especially during early seasons — in-universe, before the Borg are recognized as a potential existential threat; out of it, before Gene Roddenberry got sick enough that he couldn't exert close editorial control over the series. Averted to marvelous effect in "Yesterday's Enterprise", in which we see an alternate timeline where the Federation has fought a long and bitter war against the Klingon Empire. While it's a little daffy (Enterprise is called a battleship, yet she's patrolling alone without any screen or escort) and slightly overplayed (stardates become "combat dates" and everyone wears sidearms, even on the bridge), for the most part it's an extremely effective contrast.

Mind Probe: In the chilling episode "Frame of Mind", Riker finds himself shifting between two realities, one where he's a starship officer acting out a play about a man locked up in a mental asylum, and another where he's a man locked up in a mental asylum who imagines being a starship officer. He eventually concludes that both realities are a Lotus-Eater Machine as he wakes up in a laboratory where the aliens who captured him are trying to probe his mind for information. Riker's mind was trying to resist the probe and created the dream as a safety measure.

In "Frame of Mind", Riker is shifting between different realities—one where's he's a Starfleet officer, another where he's insane. Not so much a case of Breaking the Fourth Wall as breaking the fifth, sixth and seventh walls. Into little pieces.

The back-and-forth dialogue between Gul Madred and Picard in "Chain of Command (Part II)" too, along with some Mind Game Ship.

"Ship in a Bottle" has the crew defeat Moriarty, whose return threatens the Enterprise again, by creating a holodeck within a holodeck, then beaming him into an active memory core that will continue to run the program he's created with him unaware that the world he's in is not the real one. Picard later muses that Moriarty's new reality may be equally valid to there own and whether their reality is not just a story playing out in a box on someone's table. Barclay, once alone, pauses for a moment to actually check and laughs at himself when nothing happens.

Misblamed: The racist undertones of "Code of Honor" have been pinned on near everyone on the production staff, but it has been shown that the script only called for a few token Scary Black Man bodyguards. The director of the episode (who was fired mid-way) decided to cast every guest star as black and make the alien race an African Tribe IN SPACE!. Wil Wheaton mentioned in his blog that if it wasn't for that, the stereotypical accents and their human appearance it might have been a rather good, if derivative, episode.

Misery Builds Character: Subverted in the episode "New Ground," when Worf tells his son Alexander that the rigors of Klingon schools are meant to build character — but that their staying together will be an even greater challenge.

Mobile Fishbowl: The Benzites are a semi-aquatic race who have a special attachment to their uniforms which blows a fine mist in the direction of their faces on a regular basis so they can continue to breathe.

Monster Is a Mommy: In "Galaxy's Child", a huge space dwelling creature gets killed just before it gives birth.

Beverly Crusher in "I Borg" - it's understandable that she would want to care and help a single injured Borg, and even that she wouldn't want said Borg to be used as an instrument of destruction... But her constant complaining and refusal to treat the Borg race as what they actually are, especially considering the And I Must Scream hell Picard went through and the thousands of Borg mooks the Federation has destroyed, is not only hypocritical and insulting, but contrary to her own actions in helping to destroy or detain other alien threatsnote basically she only wants to help the Borg because it is human shaped and she identifies with it.

Crusher's decisions and view of medical ethics and patient care is often steeped in Double Standards. She professes to care about her patients, but she ignores what they want, patient autonomy and their personal, cultural and racial viewpoints. She decides what her patients want, what they need, and ignores all informed consent. In "Ethics" she even gives a patient only the options she thinks are best, and then turns around and criticizes the doctor who does. She also has a very bad habit of blaming other people when patients die under her care, such as blaming Worf for the death of a Romulan because he wouldn't donate his blood (despite the Romulan refusing to take his blood anyway), and pushes her opinions onto other people despite what they may want. It gets so bad that she not only decides what they should want, she completely invalidates their opinions and flat-out ignores them. Not a single person picks her up on this despite Picard talking about "respecting others and their cultures" just minutes before.

Moral Luck: In the episode "Brothers" a boy pranks his younger brother, which scares the brother enough for him to run and hide. While hiding the younger brother eats a fruit that leaves him so ill he nearly dies. The older brother is severely scolded by numerous cast members for 'nearly killing' his brother. However, while a little cruel for a prank there was no reason for the older brother to expect anything worse then his younger brother being frighted for a little while out of his prank. This feels particularly horrible since a child that young would likely already be horrible guilt ridden to the point of tears and any competent parent would go out of their way to tell the child that this wasn't his fault not further scolding or blaming him.

Most Annoying Sound: In-Universe example in "Suddenly Human". The Talarians and Jono all make a wailing sound as their way of mourning their dead comrades while being treated in sick bay. Picard can't stand it and after asking them nicely a couple times finally shouts at them to be quiet. They do what he says that time, much to the relief of Dr. Crusher and her staff, who weren't enjoying it either.

Motivational Kiss: In one away mission, Data gets such a kiss from a local girl. He is perplexed.

Ms. Fanservice: Troi. Marina Sirtis said that she was thrilled with the role because "There's a little ugly girl inside of me going 'Yay! I'm a sex symbol!'"

Mundane Solution: In "Contagion", he solution to the purging the Enterprise of a virus that was going to cause a warp core breach was...turning the ship off and on again.

My Biological Clock Is Ticking: "Manhunt". More like My Biological Clock Has Gone To Red Alert! Played for laughs with Deanna's mother Lwaxana. It is revealed that Betazoid women in late middle-age experience "The Phase". This is a source of horror to Picard (the target of Lwaxana's attentions) and a source of amusement to almost everyone else, especially Riker (which might account for why he put his relationship with Deanna on hiatus for a couple of decades).

Riker: Yes, it's something Troi warned me about when we first started to see each other. A Betazoid woman, when she goes through this phase, quadruples her sex drive.

In "The Survivors", Kevin Uxbridge, an immortal being with incredible powers and a lifelong pacifist, admits that when he saw his wife Rishaun murdered by the Husnock, in a fit of blind rage he wiped out every Husnock, everywhere. And as heartbroken as he is about Rishaun's death, he's even more devastated by his retribution.

The terraformers in "Home Soil" are devastated to find out that there were lifeforms on Valera III after all.

Picard in "Galaxy's Child" after accidentally killing a cosmozoan in self-defense. The Enterprise ends up playing mommy to it's baby.

In "The Measure of a Man," Riker is forced to argue the case against Data's rights. Riker does his job very well, including a devastating moment where he turns Data off to prove his point. After sitting down, though, Riker silently laments what he's doing to one of his closest friends. Even after Picard wins the case, Riker is still hung up on his actions until Data reassures him that it's okay.

Mystical Pregnancy: "The Child" may be the most perfect example of this trope ever committed to film.

Mythology Gag: The first time we see Picard in the past during the series finale, "All Good Things...", he finds himself aboard a shuttlecraft approaching Enterprise piloted by Tasha Yar, en route to his first time setting foot aboardship. The name of the shuttle? Galileo, which is the best-known of all the shuttles carried by Enterprise during the original series. This was the only episode of Next Generation to feature a shuttlecraft Galileo.

Name Order Confusion: In "Ensign Ro", Picard mistakenly addresses Ro Laren as "Ensign Laren", and she rather pointedly corrects him that Bajorans traditionally put their surname before their given name.

Picard: I'm sorry, I didn't know.

Ro: No, there's no reason you should. It's an old custom. Most Bajora these days accept the distortion of their names in order to assimilate. I do not.

Naval Blockade: During the Klingon civil war the Federation put a blockade along the Klingon-Romulan border to keep the Romulans from supplying the Duras Sisters.

Neck Lift: The first time by Data to Wesley was more of a "by the shirt collar." The next time to a Ferengi (may also be by the collar as we join him in progress with the Ferengi lifted above screen, flailing) in "The Last Outpost." The next, under alien influence, Data does this to Picard in the episode "Power Play," and under brotherly influence, to a rogue Borg before crushing its neck in "Descent, part one." Why? Both times because he got angry. Also done for The Worf Effect by Anya the Allasomorph to Worf in "The Dauphin."

Negative Space Wedgie: Used throughout the series, especially in early seasons, when the characters and relationships hadn't yet quite jelled and writers needed an easy way to drive plots. Later episodes tended to use them as a foil to the characters, not so much a plot engine in their own right.

"The Game" doesn't even try to hide its contempt for videogames, which is ironic given how many videogames the NG crew helped with later. The game itself is just a front for what is essentially a recreational drug, and a hugely addictive brainwashing drug at that. So there are two interpretations to this episode: either videogames are senselessly pointless and as addictive and damaging as a drug; or this trope is subverted and the point is that Drugs Are Bad and recreational drugs can look as harmless as a videogame but can be addictive as crack.

The episode where Barclay was discovered to have a holodeck addiction (having created an Eden for himself with a sexy Troi and a bumbling midget Riker) that begins to interfere with the performance of his basic duties. Troi herself explains that everybody enjoys the fantasy of the holodeck, but it's self destructive to rely on it to the exclusion of REAL experiences and friends.

Nightmare Sequence: The terrifying visions and paranoia in "Night Terrors" are caused by aliens who simply don't understand the effect their method of communication has on the human brain.invoked

Nobody Ever Complained Before: In "Half a Life", the entire species of people who ritualistically kill themselves on their 60th birthdays seems shocked and baffled when one of their own refuses to do so so (because he needs more time in order save the whole planet - also, he'd fallen in love with Lwaxana). Apparently none of their 60-year-olds had ever had any qualms about dying before. Or alternatively, looking at how closed-off and ritualistic the society is, we don't know that no one has ever complained before. No one is going to check that all these suicides aren't occasionally... "assisted."

Despite her showing up a lot throughout the series, we never do find out just what it is that Picard did to so completely earn Guinan's trust and vice versa.

However, the reason why Q is so wary of Guinan is never explained.

We also never find out what exactly led to Jack Crusher's death, or how Picard was involved.

Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Jean-Luc Picard, a Frenchman played by an obviously English actor using Yorkshire idioms - Grand. Patrick Stewart had tried speaking in a French accent but sounded so ridiculous that he gave up.

Not Now, Kiddo: Wesley gets this treatment sometimes, most notably in "Where No One Has Gone Before", where he tries twice to tell Riker some important observations of their mysterious Alien of the Week. To his credit, Riker owns up to his mistake when he realizes what happened.

Not So Different: In "The Vengeance Factor", as a means of building a bridge between Sovereign Marouk and Gatherer leader Chorgun, Picard notes the two really are quite similar as they are wise, intelligent, responsible leaders to their groups and seek what is best for them.

Not-So-Imaginary Friend: In the aptly titled episode "Imaginary Child", an alien takes the form of a young girl's imaginary friend. The imaginary friend disappears whenever an adult comes near.

No Antagonist: After the first few seasons, most episodes were like this.

Quite a few instances of cargo containers not being confined or strapped down (including ones marked with radioactive or biohazard warnings!). For instance, Worf gets paralyzed by a falling container in one episode, and Riker would've gotten creamed by one rolling off a catwalk in "True Q", had he not been saved by timely intervention. There're also railings in Engineering too short to keep a person from falling off, and the long-lampshaded lack of seatbelts and circuit breakers.

Not to mention the outrageous frequency of safety failures that seem to occur on Starfleet ships. Holodecks, transporters, the ship's antimatter containment. They all supposedly have tons of redundant safety features (particularly the warp core, which is the 24th century equivalent of a nuclear reactor), yet Rule of Drama dictates that they will all fail utterly at a moment's notice.

Averted in "Unnatural Selection". Pulaski wants to bring one of the potentially-infected children out of stasis using a force field as protection. Picard refuses to allow it, pointing out that force fields are prone to failure.

No Poverty: Or money, either. Replicators and antimatter generators with a new social philosophy did away with poverty.

No Sense of Humor: Data repeatedly attempts to understand humor as part of his quest to become more human.

Non-Malicious Monster: The Crystalline Entity is an Obliviously Evil space-faring creature that is feared for its ability to scour entire planets of life, but Picard defends its right to exist on the basis that it is merely feeding, as any lifeform must to survive.

In the episode "Firstborn," Lursa and B'Etor of the House of Duras are suspected of an assassination attempt against Worf. It turns out a future version of Alexander, Worf's son, had traveled back in time to stage this attempt so as to motivate the young Alexander to become a Klingon warrior.

In the episode "True Q", Q offers Amanda Rogers the choice to remain with humans if she can resist the temptation to use the powers of the Q. Amanda agrees, but almost the moment she and Picard leave the ready room, all hell breaks loose on the planet they're orbiting, endangering the lives of millions of people, as well as Riker and Geordi on the surface. Picard immediately suspects that Q had something to do with it, but he shrugs and says, "Not this time, Picard." Of course, Q's not only an inveterate liar, but he's also omnipotent. So even if he didn't have anything to do with it (which is dubious), he could easily have known that something was about to happen and waiting to offer the choice until that precise moment.

Novelization: Unlike TOS and TAS, which saw every episode adapted in some form, only a handful of key TNG episodes were novelized, including its first and last episodes, and a few key episodes in-between such as the TOS crossovers "Relics" and "Unification".

The Nudifier: One Ferengi transporter does this when transporting women.

The classic episode, "The Best of Both Worlds". The Borg kidnapped Captain Picard and are ready to conquer the galaxy, having turned Picard into their mouthpiece, Locutus of Borg. Riker steels himself and orders the Enterprise to fire its main deflector dish, a jury-rigged Wave Motion Gun capable of vaporizing a small continent. — "Mr. Worf... FIRE." The ship cuts loose with its Doomsday weapon... which does preciselyjack shitagainst the Borg. The moment is beyond words as it slowly dawns on the crew that they've come up against the one enemy they will not defeat. Locutus even taunts them over it:

Locutus: "The knowledge and experience of the human Picard is part of us, now. It has prepared us for all possible courses of action. Your resistance is hopeless...Number One"

In "I, Borg", the entire senior staff has one when they realize that the wreckage they are investigating is a Borg vessel, and there's a survivor. Picard is so shocked, he briefly entertains Worf's suggestion that they kill the drone, make its death look like an accident, and get the hell out of there. That honor-obsessed Worf is the one to suggest that course of action speaks to the horror of the situation.

In the episode where Barclay is introduced, Capt. Picard accidentally calls him "Broccoli". His reaction is quite expressive.

Implied in "Parallels", where a Bajoran ship begins attacking the Enterprise in a universe where they're becoming more aggressive. Cue interference with the temporal fissure causing thousands of Enterprises (at least) from other alternate timelines to suddenly appear. The Bajoran ship immediately stands down. One can only imagine this is what that ship's crew were thinking...

In the episode "Time Squared" the Enterprise picks up a shuttle and is surprised to find it crewed by a future version of Captain Picard too incoherent to understand, while the shuttle's logs show the Enterprise being destroyed. The crew then needs to work out what sequence of events caused the destruction, and avert it.

After the crew figures out they're in a time loop in "Cause and Effect", they're able to analyze "temporal echoes" and hear the future destruction of the ship.

Ominous Visual Glitch: In "Future Imperfect", Commander Riker is trapped inside a virtual reality simulator. Once he realizes the reality is strange and doesn't make sense, he is moved to another level of "real" world, but the setting has simply changed to a new illusion. The shift between several illusions uses distortion with little squares.

One Character, Multiple Lives: In the series finale, Captain Picard is living in three alternate timelines, one in his past, one in his present, and one in his future, at the same time, and has to use information gathered in certain timelines to aid others.

Ontological Mystery: Used in "Clues" and "Conundrum" to great effect; both are generally seen as among the better episodes of their seasons, if not of the series as a whole.

Open Mouth, Insert Foot: During the 3rd season episode, Hollow Pursuits, Capt. Picard accidentally calls Barclay by his unofficial nickname Broccoli. Data tries to put a positive spin on the situation by referencing psychology but really only makes the situation worse.

Orient Express: In "Emergence", the train appears on the Enterprise's holodeck.

Worf occasionally uses Klingon curse words. Also, in Fanon, Picard frequently swears in French (something he actually did on-screen, if only rarely).

Combining the two, during a tense on-screen moment on a Klingon planet, the governor of this planet accuses Picard of speaking "the lies of a taHqeq" (He claims to have confiscated Federation weapons used by separatists—they turn out to be Romulan replicas), which prompts Picard to get right up in his face and unload a barrage of unintelligible but vile-sounding Klingon back at him... leaving the dignitary (favourably) impressed enough to comment: "You swear well, Picard. You must have Klingon blood in your veins."

A perfect example is an exchange involving Worf, Riker, and the eponymous Romulan admiral in the episode "The Defector":

Jarok (posing as "Setal"): How do you allow Klingon pahtk to walk around in a Starfleet uniform?

Worf: You are lucky this is not a Klingon ship. We know how to deal with spies.

Jarok: Remove this tohzah from my sight.

Riker: Your knowledge of Klingon curses is impressive. But, as a Romulan might say, only a veruul would use such language in public.

Of the nine series regulars who had their names in the opening credits for all or part of the show's run, only Geordi had two parents as of the series's opening (and his mother died in the final season). Worf, Beverly, and Tasha were all orphaned as children (though Worf wound up with a great set of adoptive parents). Riker, Troi, and Wesley each lost one parent when they were children (Riker's mother, Troi's father, Wesley's father). Picard's parents were both dead long before he became captain, though they probably died when he was an adult. The inventor who built Data disappeared when his home planet was attacked and was presumed dead until the middle of the episode "Brothers," then really died just a handful of scenes later. We also get to meet a woman who claims to be Data's "mother" in the Seventh season. She really is, after a fashion. She's actually an android duplicate of the (long-dead) woman who was both Data's co-creator and Noonien Soong's wife.

Guinan's family either died or were assimilated when the Borg all but destroyed the El-Aurians. Alexander, the only semi-regular child other than Wesley, lost his mother as a toddler (and was raised by her alone up to that point). And whenever we had a one-off guest star whose parentage was some sort of plot point, be it a child (Jeremy Aster, Salia) or an adult (Amanda Rogers, Jason Vigo), they had an excellent chance of being Conveniently an Orphan.

Quite a number of children featured in the series also had one or both parents dead or not around. "The Bonding" had a boy Jeremy whose mother died on an away mission. His father died earlier. Clara in "Imaginary Friend" only had a father. Alexander, Worf's son, initially only lived with his mother until she died. Worf then sent him to live with his adopted parents. Jake and Willie's parents were on a sabbatical in the episode "Brothers". The nine and eleven-year-old brothers stayed on the Enterprise.

Planetary Nation: played straight usually, but one episode had an aversion. The planet was ruled by two separate governments, the Kes (not to be confused with the character on Voyager) and the Prytt, who were engaged in a cold war with each other. The Kes were applying for Federation membership and Picard lampshaded this trope when he mentioned planets that join the Federation are usually unified. It's never said whether or not the Kes would be admitted but it's implied they won't be.

In the first episode encountering the Borg, "Q Who?", we learn that the Borg had destroyed the homeworld of Guinan's people, the El-Aurians. We see the surviving refugees arrive at Earth in transport ships during the opening of Star Trek: Generations. Again, it appears that the Federation never bothered to find out what they were running from, even though it was clear Guinan already knew their name, tactics, etc.

Portal Door: "Contagion", in which an Iconian gateway is critical in the resolution of the plot.

Pretend to Be Brainwashed: In the episode "Conspiracy", Picard uncovers an alien plot to infect the leadership of Starfleet with Puppeteer Parasites in preparation for an all-out invasion. He goes straight to Starfleet Command to scope out which of his superiors haven't been infected, but he walks into a trap and is captured. Then Riker appears and seems to have been taken over by a parasite, but it was really a ploy so he could help Picard take them out (he couldn't reveal this to Picard without blowing his cover).

Principles Zealot: Captain Picard (and thus his crew) in "Homeward" where he chose to let an entire civilization die, one that they could easily have saved. They commit this genocide-through-inaction for the simple reason that the rules say so. Of course, it doesn't take long before a sympathetic civilian The Professor character goes all What the Hell, Hero? on them.

Private Eye Monologue: Parodied in "The Big Goodbye". At the denouement, after Riker asks Data what happened in the holodeck, Data puts on an exaggerated Humphrey Bogart-esque voice and manner and begins to monologue "It was raining in the city by the bay. A hard rain. Hard enough to wash the slime —" before Picard tells him to shut up and he meekly turns back to the Ops console (while still wearing his 1940s gangster costume).

Psycho Prototype: Lore, with Data as the production version. Their creator disassembled Lore before the start of the series, to stop him doing any further damage, but it didn't last, resulting in several reasonably good episodes and a lot more range for Brent Spiner than he'd otherwise have had opportunity to employ.

The Punishment Is the Crime: In "The Survivors", the Enterprise crew encounter an alien entity posing as an elderly human man who committed genocide against a warlike species after they killed his human wife during an attempted conquest of the couple's colony. Picard decides the only thing they can do is to leave the immortal energy being alone. The Enterprise has no way to pass sentence on him, but he's already mad with grief over his wife's death and filled with remorse for his crime. His self-imposed isolation is its own sentence.

Puppeteer Parasite: In "Conspiracy", a race of parasitic worm aliens use various Federation members as their own puppets.

Put on a Bus: Dr. Pulaski. Also, the woman who was the head engineer in Season One, before Geordi was promoted.

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Racial Remnant: The early episode "Haven" has a shipful of Tarellians, the last survivors of a deadly plague.

Real Award, Fictional Character: A future version of Data in "All Good Things..." holds the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge. This post has been held by such real-world luminaries as Isaac Newton, Stephen Hawking, and Charles Babbage.

A Real Man Is a Killer: Let's face it, Picard was lectured to this effect many times over the years. (This was Worf's primary function, repeatedly getting shot down when he suggested hitting people.) Whenever the Federation indulged in this philosophy, the results were less than satisfactory; Data's forced relocation of human settlers in "The Ensigns of Command" paved the way for a similar problem with Maquis, opening up a whole new can of worms.

At the end of "Ethics", Beverly has a beautifully scathing one for Dr. Russell, and does it without even raising her voice:

Dr. Crusher: I am delighted that Worf is going to recover. You gambled. He won. Most of your patients aren't so lucky. You scare me, Doctor. You risk peoples' lives and justify it in the name of research. But genuine research takes time... sometimes a lifetime of painstaking, detailed work to get results. Not you— you take shortcuts... right through living tissue. You put your research ahead of your patients, and as far as I'm concerned, that's a violation of our most sacred trust. I'm sure the work you've done here will be hailed as a stunning breakthrough. Enjoy your laurels, Doctor. I'm not sure I could.

Q also delivers a doozy to Picard in "All Good Things", which also doubles as Lampshade Hanging since he is basically providing a summation of common fan complaints about the show:

Q: Seven years ago, I said we'd be watching you, and we have been - hoping that your ape-like race would demonstrate *some* growth, give *some* indication that your minds had room for expansion. But what have we seen instead? You, worrying about Commander Riker's career. Listening to Counselor Troi's pedantic psychobabble. Indulging Data in his witless exploration of humanity.

Subverted in one episode; the entire crew is hit with amnesia and forget their ranks. The executive officer is someone the audience has never before met. Turns out he is an alien intruder, trying to trick the Enterprise into attacking the enemies of his species.

The Cardassians are introduced in the season four episode "The Wounded," where it is explained that it has been only a year since the end of the long, costly war between the Federation and the Cardassian Union. However, this information means that the first two years of the show occurred during a war that was never seen, heard or experienced. Just where, exactly, was the flagship of Starfleet while the rest of the fleet was engaged in active operations?

Really 700 Years Old: Guinan. In "Time's Arrow" Data notes that he knew that Guinan's species was long-lived, but he had no idea that she was actually on Earth during the 19th Century.

Requisite Royal Regalia: Lwaxana Troi brags she's "Heir to the Holy Rings of Betazed", among other boasting of her position (which likely means she's high nobility at the very least.)

Another of her boasts is "Holder of the Sacred Chalice of Riix", which her daughter quite bluntly points out is nothing more than:

"An old clay pot with mold growing inside of it."

Retirony: An interesting example - the person doesn't die, and we actually find him after it happened: before being rescued by the Enterprise, after being stuck in a teleporter stream for over 75 years, Montgomery Scott wasn't even serving on the ship he was trapped on: he was on his way to be dropped for his retirement. He decides not to after the events of the episode.

Robo Family: Data has a 'brother', Lore, and even creates his own android 'daughter' Lal. There's an android copy of his "mother" out there as well, who believes she is the REAL woman and is designed to age and eventually die like a human being.

Data and Yar, on one occasion only, which provided the trope's current page and left a lasting impression on Data. That, in turn, made a critical difference in an otherwise unrelated circumstance later on.

Data and Jenna D'Sora in "In Theory", though not the sexual part. (And not really the "relationship" part, either, since Data couldn't really hold up his end, try though he did.)

Robot Hair: Data, and his brothers, who are androids designed to be superficially similar to human beings in many ways. Their hair is made to look artificial by heavy application of gel, and keeping Brent Spiner's hairline sharply trimmed.

Robots Think Faster: Data can process sixty trillion linear operations per second. On a number of occasions, he uses this speed to make decisions and calculations far faster than the average human.

In "In Theory", Data dates a human woman. Near the end of the episode, she kisses him passionately, then asks what he was thinking of in that moment. She breaks up with him, among other reasons because she realizes that she will never truly have his full attention.

Data: In that particular moment, I was reconfiguring the warp field parameters, analyzing the collected works of Charles Dickens, calculating the maximum pressure I could safely apply to your lips, considering a new food supplement for Spot...

Royals Who Actually Do Something: Riva, crown prince of Ramatis, is a successful diplomat, bringing peace to warring factions no matter how long it takes, even when the telepathic "chorus" who allow him to communicate despite his deafness are killed by one of the factions.

The Diane DuaneThe Next Generation novel Dark Mirror involves an alien race that's essentially dolphins IN SPACE! (They're not related to the whales IN SPACE from Star Trek IV.)

The Star Trek The Next Generation: Technical Manual notes that the Cetacean tanks on board contain the dolphin and whale navigational specialists. This is pretty much shout out to Gunbuster, where cybernetically enhanced dolphins form the main navigational computer of the Eltreum.

One The Next Generation novel had a dolphin as a supporting character, who held the rank of commander in Starfleet. At one point, after having failed in several other attempts, Riker gets its attention with a loud cab-hailing whistle. This earns Riker a compliment on his grasp of swearing in Delphine.

Satanic Archetype: In the episode "Devil's Due", an alien claims to be the Devil-figure from any number of worlds' mythologies (including Klingon) and "proves" it by taking their forms.

Sequel Episode: "The Naked Now" is a direct sequel to TOS' "The Naked Time". (Surely the oddest request anyone has ever given Data is to look through all known records for an instance of Starfleet officers showering in their clothing.) George Takai wasn't too impressed with this one; his opinion of the episode is one you should seek out. Funnily DS9 also had a stab at this sort of episode ("Fascination") and it wasn't too hot, either.

Sequential Symptom Syndrome: In "Realm of Fear" Barclay has the computer read the symptoms of "transporter psychosis" and acts out the symptoms as he hears them.

Due in large part to Rick Steinbach being a huge otaku, there are tons and tons of shoutouts to 80s anime, in particular Dirty Pair and Gunbuster, some blatant, some very very subtle.

Episode 80 of Next Gen begins with Picard reporting in his log that they just left the same planet that TOS visited in their 79th and last episode.

"The Mind's Eye" borrows heavily from The Manchurian Candidate, most notably with a scene where Geordi is instructed to kill a holographic version of Chief O'Brien.

In "QPid", Q transforms the crew into characters from the Robin Hood stories. Geordi is Alan A'Dale, and as a result gets a lute to play with. After a few minutes of tuneless strumming, Worf can't take it anymore, and gets up and smashes the instrument, then hands it back to Geordi, muttering, "Sorry." Much like a certainseven-year pre-med student did once.

In "Arsenal of Freedom", when asked by a computer-generated image of Captain Rice what ship he's come from, Riker responds that he's serving aboard the Lollipop. "It's just been commissioned; it's a good ship."

In "The First Duty", the motto of Starfleet Academy is "Ex Astris Scientia" ("From the stars, knowledge"), which was derived from Apollo 13's mission motto "Ex Luna Scientia" ("From the moon, knowledge"), which, in turn, was derived from the United States Naval Academy's motto "Ex Scientia Tridens" ("From knowledge, sea power").

"A Fistful of Datas" should be pretty self-explanatory. The episode also borrows from Shane (which director Patrick Stewart watched to get a feel for westerns) and Westworld (wherein the holographic outlaws take the form of Data, giving each of them android-level strength and agility).

In "Phantasms", Data has a nightmare where Counselor Troi is a cake being eaten, which is an awful lot like the music video for Tom Petty's "Don't Come Around Here No More".

In The Nth Degree Barclay who has integrated his mind into the computer responds to an order from Picard with "I'm afraid I cant do that, sir," in a manner very reminiscent of HAL9000.

In "The Naked Now" Geordi ruminates on how unfair it is that he's never seen a rainbow.

Shown Their Work: With the exception of the pain-inducing implant, all the Cold-Blooded Torture practices Gul Madred uses on Picard in "Chain of Command: Part II" are taken directly from Amnesty International archives. Patrick Stewart, who is a strong supporter of Amnesty International, was pleased by this.

in "The Battle", Data begins a surprisingly accurate and TechnoBabble-free description of a checksum, a computer science technique used to verify the authenticity of a piece of data—before being cut off by Riker saying he doesn't need a computer science lesson. The subject of the checksum issue? A forged log entry.

Signed Language: The character Riva in "Loud as a Whisper", performed by Deaf actor Howie Seago.

In "The Measure of a Man", there is a hearing to determine whether the android Data should legally be considered a person or the property of Starfleet. The admiral adjudicating the hearing is on the fence, until Picard suggests that declaring him property would be tantamount to slavery. The mere suggestion of this is enough to have her err on the side of caution and judge that even if she is unprepared to declare definitively that he is a person, she is unwilling to declare him property either.

In "The Most Toys", Data is captured by a Collector of the Strange and treated as just another piece of property. This is the only villain whom the Technical Pacifist Data ever attempts to kill in cold blood, as opposed to self-defense.

It should be noted that Data did not attempt to kill the villian to free himself - it was because the villian had already horribly murdered one of his subordinates with an extremely painful weapon and indicated that he was willing to do so to the rest of his subordinates to punish Data for his disobedience. Data was effectively trying to protect innocent lives. He even said "I cannot allow this to continue."

Sliding Scale of Continuity: The series generally operated at level 3 (Subtle Continuity). Most episodes focused on the Enterprise and its crew discovering new planets and alien species, and solving the problem presented in each episode. However, a few of the episodes build up Foreshadowing elements that culminate in a bigger story arc later on.

The Smurfette Principle: The show started with three women - after the security chief died, all that were left were in rather stereotypically feminine roles as the doctor and counselor. Recurring females were Keiko (botanist), Ogawa (nurse), Ro Laren and Guinan. Only the latter two were of any real importance, and the first eventually settled into the role of O'Brien's wife.

Society-on-Edge Episode: In "Force of Nature", warp drive (which powers all Federation starships) was found to be damaging to the fabric of subspace. At the end of the episode, the Federation decided that until they can figure out a way to counteract the rifts in space, all ships can't go above Warp 5 except in emergencies. Word of God is that ''Voyager'' was the first starship to permanently address the issue.

Space Clothes: The uniforms worn by the engineering staff (a tunic-miniskirt one-piece and knee-high boots, to be specific - and yes, men and women wear the same uniform) and several other crew members during the first season are truly astonishing. And the clothes wornby the denizens of the utopian paradise in "Justice" make them look sensible.

Space Friction: Averted for the most part, as in "Cause and Effect", where the plot's central crisis revolves around Enterprise and another ship, both unable to maintain steerage way, repeatedly finding themselves on a collision course resulting in the destruction of Enterprise.

Space Is Cold: Played more or less straight, as in the first-season episode "The Naked Now", wherein a ship's crew, intoxicated by the same infectious disease as in the TOS episode "The Naked Time", shut off their ship's life support system. Not long after, the Enterprise crew finds them frozen solid, complete with a thick layer of snow all over everything.

In the second-season episode "Up the Long Ladder", the Enterprise is transporting an entire Irish village, complete with accents, apparel, drinking problems, and chickens.

The Ferengi. Alternatively, they could be interpreted as Space Americans (Eagleland, negative version) or Space Capitalists, down to a strong interest in controlling other civilizations' natural resources, and at least one episode with a Ferengi being a Hawaiian-Shirted Tourist.

The Space Africans of "Code of Honor" are even worse, portrayed as barbaric, patriarchal, er... matriarchal, er... some kind of savages with complex but still demeaning gender roles. Stargate SG-1 had an episode not long after its pilot that handled similar, and head-slappingly sexist, themes. (Same writer, too.)

Averted, where Chief O'Brien tells Lieutenant Barclay at the end of "Realm of Fear" about how he overcame his own fear of spiders to work a repair in a spider-infested crawlspace. The episode ended with O'Brien's pet tarantula crawling on Barclay's arm.

Dr McCoy: Now she's a new ship, but she's got the right name, y'hear? Treat her like a lady, and she'll always bring you home.

Squick: Intentional in-universe example in "Rascals", the scene between O'Brien and Keiko, his wife who is now her 12-year-old self. He has no idea how to handle the situation, especially when she tries to cuddle up to him, and is visibly extremely uncomfortable.

Start X to Stop X: In one episode, a scientist intentionally causes a tear in space with a self-destructed warp drive, just to convince the Federation to stop using warp travel so she can prevent that very type of tear from occurring elsewhere.

Status Quo Is God: While often played straight, it was first seriously averted by the episode "Sins of the Father", which episode writer Ronald Moore cited as the series' turning point towards ongoing story arcs. While permanent changes had happened before (like the death of Tasha Yar), "Sins" really sparked Worf's entire character arc, leading to "Reunion", "Redemption" and more.

Strange-Syntax Speaker: The Tamarians in "Darmok", who speak mostly in metaphor. The universal translator can easily deliver the literal meanings, but without knowledge of the myths upon which the sayings are based, it's still near-impossible to understand.

Styrofoam Rocks: In "Ethics", Worf's spine is broken when a cargo container falls on him. The way it falls and bounces indicates that it's so light it wouldn't even hurt a human, let alone a big sturdy Klingon.

Sudden School Uniform: Not a "school uniform" as such, but Jellico ordering Troi to start wearing her duty uniform from now on in "The Chain of Command" is basically this trope.

Surprise Party: In "Parallels," the senior staff of the Enterprise D throws Worf a surprise party for his birthday after he comes back from a bat'leth tournament. The party manages to catch him off-guard, because Riker lied to him and told him that there wasn't going to be a surprise party. However, the story is about Worf shifting through various parallel realities, and whether or not there was a party varies based on which reality he's in. When he returns to his proper reality, it turns out that Deanna Troi talked Riker out of throwing the party because she didn't think Worf would like it, but the two end up spending some time together over champagne in Worf's quarters.

Sympathy for the Devil: In the episode "Skin of Evil", both Picard and Troi express their sympathy for Armus for spending untold eons on a dead planet in pain and rage after his creators abandoned him, while nevertheless acknowledging that he is a malevolent liquid of pure evil.

Tainted Veins: A side effect of inoculation with Borg assimilation nanomachines, albeit less so in TNG than in later outings, whose improved special effects could make it look considerably more horrifying.

Take a Third Option: In "Samaritan Snare", the Pakleds capture Geordi and demand access to the Enterprise's computer. Their options, summarized by Data, are, "We can either respond to the Pakleds' demands, or not. We can either use force, or not." Riker ultimately comes up with a ruse, communicated to Geordi in code— Geordi would seemingly arm the slow-witted Pakleds with sophisticated weaponry, and when the Enterprise released harmless plasma through the Bussard collectors, he would disarm the Pakleds' weapons, claiming that the Enterprise's "crimson force field" had done it.

Take That: "Relics" chimes in on the iconic "Kirk vs. Picard" argument (specifically, which is the better captain) that tends to plague the fandom by the simple expedient of having Montgomery Scott brought back from the transporter pattern buffer to comment on Kirk's more active, aggressive, and decisive command style versus Picard's more measured, careful style. The verdict: Both styles have their places - but look! Picard can do both!

Talking Is a Free Action: in a notable example in Encouter at Farpoint, Picard is somehow able to record a log in the middle of his first encounter with Q, while Q is right in front of him, and without moving his lips.

Picard: The question now is the incredible power of the Q being. Do we dare oppose it?

Tantrum Throwing: According to Worf, this is a stock feature of Klingon courtship.

Technobabble: Teraquads of it. While it's only very rarely at all concerned with any correspondence to reality, it is for the most part internally consistent; you can actually follow the scientific discussions between characters, which is of course the primary purpose of technobabble. (Besides, there's only so close to real science that a sci-fi show with FTL travel can hew.) Even Reverse the Polarity is used in the correct context.

Teleporter Accident: Lots! A recurring plot device, often handled with a surprising degree of subtlety.

Teleporters and Transporters: As could only be expected in the successor show to the Trope Codifier, and extremely useful from a production perspective in making it easy for characters to flit on and off the ship without needing to spend money and episode runtime on shuttle FX. As is often the case with TNG tech, despite the essential implausibility of the conceit, the show generally manages to keep its behavior internally consistent, keeping it from crossing the line from Plot Device to outright Deus ex Machina.

In the episode "Attached", the Enterprise's transporters are redirected by an alien force, so Picard and Crusher end up on the opposite side of the planet from where they intended.

In another episode, the Enterprise is in a confrontation with a Romulan warbird. There is a severely injured Romulan on board the Enterprise who can't be beamed to the Romulan ship unless the ship not doing the beaming lowers its shields.

That's No Moon!: In "Farpoint" we get our very first empathic reading inside the phony space station (later revealed to be a shapeshifting alien) when Troi looks like she’s straining under terrible pain or anger from a creature nearby.

Played with the time Worf was temporarily put in command of the Enterprise to deal with recently thawed Klingon Popsicles who were unaware that the war between the Empire and The Federation was over.

Riker: How did you like your first command?

Worf: ...Comfortable chair.

This Is Not My Life to Take: Inverted in an episode: the life of his enemy's son may be Worf's to take, but that means it's also his to spare.

This Page Will Self-Destruct: A somewhat humorous example in season 1 episode 10, "Haven"; a message from Deanna Troi's mother takes the form of a box with a talking head on the side, and one side explodes off of the box after the message is complete, revealing wedding gifts in the form of jewelry.

Tidally Locked Planet: The term is never actually used on-screen but two Planets of the Week fit the bill.

Dytallix B in "Conspiracy" was a world inhabited only by the Dytallix Mining Company. Due to the temperature extremes on either facing of the planet the company placed its facilities in the twilight region.

"The Dauphin" had one distinct culture develop on the day side of Daled IV, and a different one on the night side. Their differences led to a world war that the Enterprise is trying to put an end to.

Time Is Dangerous: In "Timescape", Picard is injured when he sticks his hand across the edge of a "time bubble", which causes his fingernails to age faster than his arm. Later, he experiences symptoms of "temporal narcosis" due to a malfunction of the equipment protecting him from being frozen in time.

Time Travel Episode: There's "Time's Arrow", where the Enterprise find Data's centuries-old head lying in a cave in San Francisco in the 24th century. It turns out Data went back in time to the 19th century to follow two aliens and became Trapped in the Past.

Tin Man: Played absurdly straight with Data. In "I, Borg", he not only notices and is concerned by Picard's unusual behavior in the wake of an away team having found and rescued an injured drone, but with a Meaningful Look passes Troi a suggestion that she follow him into his ready room and try to talk it over with him. If he understood emotion as poorly as he's so often at pains to suggest, even the former would be unlikely at best, to say nothing of the latter.

Tinman Typist: Also played absurdly straight with Data, in too many episodes to enumerate here.

Armus: I am a skin of evil, left here be a race of titans, who believed if they rid themselves of me, they would free the bounds of destructiveness.

"Ship in a Bottle":

Moriarty: Your crewmates here in my little ship in a bottle, seem a bit more optimistic.

"Tapestry":

Picard: There are many parts of my youth that I'm not proud of... there were loose threads... untidy parts of me that I would like to remove. But when I pulled on one of those threads... it had unraveled the tapestry of my life.

"All Good Things...":

Q: Goodbye, Jean-Luc. I'm gonna miss you... you had such potential. But then again, all good things must come to an end...

Q: The time has come to put an end to your trek through the stars.

Too Awesome to Use: The Borg were this for the show's creators. The Borg were so awesomely powerful (and impossible to negotiate with) that they only got used four times (6 episodes, because of 2-parters) over the entire 7 seasons of the show. It was just that hard to come up with a way to defeat the Borg without making them seem less awesome. Of those 4 times the Borg show up, the crew is saved once by essentially Divine Intervention, once they are merely facing an individual drone and the challenge is to make him an individual, not to defeat him, and only twice during the run of the TV series do they actually defeat the Borg.

Tasha Yar frequently loses her temper with great potential for lethal results, including screaming at Q until he freezes her. Could be argued that her stupidity is what finally got her killed.

When someone is hurt, Dr. Crusher is prone to just run right up to them and start administering treatment, WITHOUT bothering to take simple precautions like scanning the area for hostiles, toxins, and so forth, or just beaming the person and herself directly to the ship right at the beginning. This tendency has gotten her kidnapped and/or nearly killed several times.

There was an inversion in which an alien was too dumb to die. He attempted a Thanatos Gambit by shooting himself with Riker's phaser in order to frame Riker for his murder. There were a couple of holes in his story: Riker was near death at the time of the supposed murder and Crusher could tell from the angle of the blast that the shot was self-inflicted. On top of that, his suicide attempt failed because he didn't know how the Federation's phasers worked and shot himself with the phaser set to stun.

Torture Always Works: Deconstructed in the episode "Chain of Command." The Cardassians capture Picard, trying to find out information for the defenses of a system. Picard literally knows nothing about the defenses, giving all the other information he has under drugs, but unable to give information he doesn't. They torture him to try to get the information and Picard resists, but it becomes very clear that the information isn't the reason they are doing it anymore, they simply want to break him.

Torture Is Ineffective: Zigzagged in "Chain of Command". Gul Madred initially tortures Picard for information which Picard doesn't actually have, but it soon becomes clear that the Cardassians just want to break him mentally. Picard confesses to his crew that Madred succeeded, but being freed brought him back to his senses enough for his final, defiant "THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!"

Toxic Phlebotinum: In "The High Ground", the Ensata terrorists resort to using a teleporter device called an inverter to carry out their attacks on the occupying Rutian forces without being tracked, although the downside is that it caused severe cumulative distortions in the cellular chemistry of anyone using it, a process which, with prolonged use, could prove fatal.

Translation by Volume: The episode "Darmok" deals with Universal Translator failure and an encounter with friendly, yet absolutely incomprehensible aliens. Both crews and especially captains try this approach of speaking slowly, clearly and somewhat loudly. It slightly works, but both could grasp only very, very little.

Turing Test: Data, as a very sophisticated AI, often demonstrates he passes this test.

Data tests this out on Juliana Tainer when he realises that Doctor Soong recreated his wife, and Data's mother as an Android.

Two Girls to a Team: Deanna Troi and Beverly Crusher, after Tasha's death. Both had maternal and supportive roles, being the ship's head counselor and Chief Medical Officer respectively, but Troi was more exotic while Crusher was more of a down-to-earth character.

In "The Drumhead", Simon Tarses, an enlisted man in the Enterprise's medical department, is hounded by an admiral on a Witch Hunt on suspicion of being a spy because he has a Romulan grandfather. Tarses had claimed on his Starfleet entrance application that his grandfather was Vulcan.

Worf's son Alexander Rozhenko is one quarter human, from his half-human mother's side.

Bruce Maddox from "The Measure of a Man" wanted to disassemble Data in order to find out how to replicate his design. Although his goal is noble, Data refuses when it becomes obvious that Maddox doesn't have a very good idea of what he is doing, and Maddox spends the rest of the episode trying to legally force him into compliance. This is mostly because Maddox does not see Data as a self-determining individual and does not believe he has the right to refuse. He comes around at the end.

Christopher Hobson, briefly Data's first officer, constantly second-guesses his orders under the assumption that an android would not be a competent leader. He justifies this with the idea that some races are naturally more or less suited to certain tasks, which does have some validity, but since Data is one-of-a-kind and Hobson has no real knowledge of his abilities, his opinion comes off as arbitrary and bigoted. Like Maddox, Data eventually manages to earn his respect.

Admiral Nechayev and Picard never saw eye-to-eye on matters of policy, since Nechayev was far more hawkish than Picard. Whenever she appeared in an episode, it was usually a sign that she was about to browbeat Picard over his latest command decisions in the most condescending and jerkassy way possible.

Captain Edward Jellico could be considered a subversion of this trope. He is given command of the Enterprise during the "Chain of Command" two-parter and obviously doesn't get along well with the crew. His brusque and demanding style of command makes him easy to dislike, both for the crew and the audience, he appears to lack diplomatic savvy, and he even relieves Riker of his position. Despite this, Jellico is vindicated by his success in resolving the crisis of the day, saving Picard from the Cardassians and averting an armed conflict.

Virtual Reality Interrogation: Subverted an episode where Riker thinks he is a victim of one (he is supposedly in the future but his supposed wife is a woman of his dreams, that he knows never existed outside the holodeck). The hostile aliens reveal themselves when he calls them out on it. However, as it turns out the aliens aren't real either - there is just one alien, highly psychic and very lonely, keeping Riker in a Lotus-Eater Machine to have some company and conjuring things from his mind - the whole espionage plot was accidently created by Riker's own fears.

In one episode, Data — who has amnesia and doesn't know about his own history or Starfleet — is accused of poisoning a well in the village he's living in, but he's really trying to cure them of radiation poisoning by putting the cure in the drinking water.

In the episode The Most Toys, also dealing with Data, an unscrupulous trader poisons a water supply with a specific substance so that the Enterprise would have to deal with him as he (conveniently) had a supply of the extremely rare antidote.

We All Die Someday: In an episode a historian from the 26th century comes to watch what happens during a crisis on the Enterprise back in the 24th. Picard wants him to tell him what the future says happened, but he's reluctant.

Rasmussen: You must see that if I were to influence you, everything in this sector, in this quadrant of the galaxy could change. History, my history, would unfold in a way other than it already has. Now what possible incentive could anyone offer me to allow that to happen?

Picard: I have two choices. Either way, one version of history or another will wend its way forward. The history you know or another one. Now who is to say which is better? What I do know is here, today, one way, millions of lives could be saved. Now isn't that incentive enough?

Rasmussen: Everyone dies, Captain. It's just a question of when. All of those people down there died years before I was born. All of you up here, as well. So you see, I can't get quite as worked up as you over the fate of some colonists who, for me, have been dead a very, very long time.

Weaponized Offspring: The "Bluegill" neural parasites were controlled by "mother-creatures"- large parasites- that appeared to produce the smaller mind-controlling bug-like parasites.

We Hardly Knew Ye: Tasha Yar's actress Denise Crosby felt she wasn't useful and asked to be let go. Her death was so sudden that it took a while before you realized she wasn't coming back. A Time Travel episode briefly brought her back and the subsequent timeline screw-ups resulted in a recurring enemy that looked exactly like her.

We never do find out the final fate of Geordi's mother, whose vessel completely vanishes without a trace, in "Interface".

The alien in "Future Imperfect". At the end of the episode, he beams up with Riker, with Riker promising he won't be alone, and is never seen or mentioned again.

The clone of Kahless from "Rightful Heir". It's set up as though he'll have a fair amount of indirect influence on the direction of the Klingon Empire, but he's barely ever mentioned after this episode.

Fifteen minutes into one episode, the crew beam down to rescue Deanna trapped inside a crashed shuttle. A strange alien lifeform is blocking the way. The crew try to reason with it, as per usual. The creature isn't very friendly with them. Then, it kills Lieutenant Yar.

"The Best Of Both Worlds". In two parts, we see the arrival of the Borg way ahead of schedule. They proceed to invade Federation space, defeat any and all attempts by the Enterprise crew to defeat them, convert Picard into Locutus of Borg and then Riker orders the crew to fire on said converted captain, all in the first half. The second opens up with that failing followed by The Battle of Wolf 359.

Wham Line: "Oh please." With those 2 words, Q changed from an trickster jackass to an omnipotent being with infinite power and infinite contempt for humanity.

Riker and Pulaski in "Up the Long Ladder" get mugged for DNA by a race that propagates by clones. Sure, that's bad, but their response is to massacre the clones! The Prime Minister is highly upset with them.

Picard's refusal to commit genocide on the Borg gets him chewed out by his superiors.

No matter what your view on Picard's POV in Silicon Avatar about whether they had the right to kill the Crystaline Entitity or not; the fact remains that Dr Marr is absolutely correct to call out Picard when he claims that this creature devouring billions of people is no different to a whale eating cuttlefish. This is the sort of thing that Gul Dukat would say, not a man so moral that he would turn traitor against the Federation to save six hundred Ba'Ku from being forcibly relocated.

In "Pen Pals," Riker gives some sage advice to Wesley Crusher when the latter is given his first command: "In your position it's important to ask yourself one question: 'What would Picard do?'" (The line promptly underwent Memetic Mutation, naturally enough.)

In "The Best of Both Worlds", Picard is captured and assimilated by the Borg. Riker is placed in command. One of the first things he does is walk into the now-his Ready Room, look at the chair and ask "What would you do?" Then walks in Guinan and tells Riker that he has to think for himself now, as the Borg now know all of Picard's tricks.

Where Da White Women At?: "Code of Honor", with emphasis on a literal Battle of the Sexes and unbelievable alien culture of Zulus wearing tinfoil. "Why aren’t we warping out of here?" says Picard at the conclusion, and one can't help but agree with him.

White Glove Test: Picard in "The Ensigns of Command." See the trope page for more information.

Betazoids, to other Betazoids at least, as lying to a fellow telepath is about as sensible as it sounds.

Vulcans are reputed to have this trait in-universe, but in fact freely do so if they believe it to be the logical thing to do.

Would Hit a Girl: Subverted by Worf in "Hide and Q". When Riker (temporarily in possession of Q's powers) conjures up an attractive Klingon woman for Worf, after a bit of mutual snarling he promptly backhands her, throwing her several feet across the room. Everyone looks horrified until they realize that they're not fighting; this is what Klingon foreplay looks like.

Worth It: After Worf kills Duras at the end of "Reunion", in revenge for Duras' killing K'Ehlyr, Picard calls him out and puts a formal reprimand on his record. Worf's attitude makes it clear that he doesn't really give a shit about the reprimand.

Wrote the Book: In "The Best of Both Worlds part 2", Guinan and Riker have an extended discussion of their strategy centering around this metaphor.

You Are a Credit to Your Race: Q, a Sufficiently Advanced Alien, more or less feels this way about Picard. At every possible chance he gets Q makes fun of the inadequacies of the human race, but shows special interest in Picard whom he frequently tests to prove the worth of the human species. As Picard passes these tests Q praises Picard for his abilities and tells him that he above all other humans he has met proves the potential for greatness that humanity possesses. Beyond even that Q actually went so far as to say Picard is the closet thing he has to a friend in all the universe, above even his own race!

You Have to Believe Me: In the series finale, "All Good Things," Picard finds himself jumping back and forth between different points in his life a la Billy Pilgrim. Unfortunately, in the future he's an old man with the beginnings of an Alzheimer's-like disease. If he wasn't Jean-Luc Picard, no one would give his ravings about temporal anomalies and the destruction of humanity a second thought.

The flagrant misuse of "sentient". They seem to think it's a synonym for "sapient".

Data: "And though you are not sentient, Spot, and cannot comprehend..."—Ode To Spot

Data also misuses the words ‘obviates’ (removes [a need or a difficulty]; avoids, prevents) in the very same poem as ‘makes obvious’.

For a species so obsessed with "honour", many Klingons depicted in the series seem to be perfectly comfortable with stabbing each other in the back to get ahead. Worf defies this trope, however, as he gives several epic verbal putdowns on just why this sort of behaviour is hypocritical and just what having true honour actually means.

You Know Who Said That: Jean-Luc Picard, facing a Witch Hunt of a trial, quotes the prosecutor's father speaking out against just such actions. The prosecutor doesn't take her father's quote being thrown in her face well.

Your Head Asplode: Remmick near the end of "Conspiracy". Quite gruesome for Star Trek.

Riker invokes this when speaking to a holographic representation of Captain Rice in "Arsenal of Freedom", which is trying to get as much tactical information about the Enterprise and its mission as possible. When the faux Rice asks who sent them there, Riker says, "Your mother. She was worried about you."

In "Samaritan Snare," Picard mentions this as one motivation for his fight with some Naussicans in his academy days:

"I stood toe-to-toe with the worst of the three and I told him what I thought of him, his pals, his planet and I possibly made some passing reference to his questionable parentage."

You Need to Get Laid: This is the real reason why Riker asked Picard to buy him a Horg'ahn on Risa in "Captain's Holiday."

Your Normal Is Our Taboo: Riker falls in love with an alien woman who gets really hated by her own people for their love. Not because he's a human, but because he's a man. Her culture require her and her partner to both be intergender. Essentially, it's a fear of having a gender at all.

Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: The episode "The High Ground" dealt with the "you say terrorists, we say freedom fighters" issue. The Ansata separatists are trying to overthrow their Rutian oppressors "by any means necessary", including suicide bombers (while the government they're fighting makes use of indefinite detention, and in the past, simply killed people). During this episode, Data notes the "historical fact"note as decreed by Paramount, in contrast to the original script that Ireland was reunified in 2024 after a successful terrorist campaign (which is why this episode wasn't broadcast in its entirety in either Britain or the Republic of Ireland until years after.)

You See, I'm Dying: Evil Twin android Lore is about to walk out on his creator Dr. Soong when the latter reveals that he is dying — as Lore, for all his faults, does have emotions, this makes him stop.

So far the show's managed to avoid falling into this trap quite as hard and as quickly as TOS did. Mind you there is a general sense of fashion victimism on the Enterprise. The bridge set feels like the epitome of eighties luxury, all beige leather seats and wood paneling. Cozy-looking seats that lounge waaay back... given that all they are doing is pushing the odd button on an armrest, it's surprising half the crew doesn't fall asleep.

But the biggest exception is noticeable for the kind of computer nerds who love Trek. In the late 80s and early 90s, the LCARS computer interface looked incredibly slick and high-tech (touchscreen controls?!)... but as of 2010, many people would wonder why there doesn't seem to be tabbed displaying, the apparent inability to have multiple applications running at once, and the laughably slow speed at which text appears on screen, line by line, although the latter could easily simply have been implemented as a form of Extreme Graphical Representation.

The PADD's are another example. While they seemed very impressive at the time, they often fall well short of the capabilities of real-world tablet computers post-2010. For instance, they do not appear to offer two-way communications functionality (in particular video) and like the main computer stations cannot seem to run multiple applications. It is not unusual in-universe to see people who are multitasking using more than one PADD, with each one being used for a single task.

In-universe. After Wolf 359 everything changed. The Federation in early series was depicted as filled with eternal optimists. After Wolf 359, the Federation leaders are shown to be clearly more jaded and should they have to, will not hesistate to remind everyone just why they are one of the dominantpowers of the Alpha Quadrant.

A great in-universe example of zeerust is seen in the episode "Booby Trap". A derelict alien ship that is 1000 years old is discovered in an asteroid field. Picard and the team visit the wreck out of curiosity. The bridge interior looks like something that wouldn't be out of place in The Original Series.

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